Thou Shalt Read This

 Convicted killer sentenced to death. It's a headline I happened to read twice in one day over the weekend. Two separate cases, the same net result. Killers being killed. Makes sense, right? Quid pro quo. Thou shalt not kill.

Wait a second. Does that mean everyone? All of us? How can this be? I get the part where killing is bad. Wrong even. So we need to discourage that, right. So the way we're going to do that is by putting it right there in the rules. If you kill someone, you could go to jail.

Could. Not always. There are plenty of circumstances in which killing is maybe not the worst thing you could do. Justification is important. There is a category of killing other human beings called "justifiable homicide." Which is why we have courts. And judges and juries. These jobs and the people who do them help us all figure out when it is okay to kill one another. Sometimes these folks decide that it is okay to kill someone if they had a really good reason. The flipside of that is when it is decided that after you have argued about your reasons for killing someone don't persuade the people making those judgements, they can decide that you should be killed. For killing. 

How can this be?

Well, the main thing is that this is supposed to be a deterrent. You had better not kill because you might end up being killed yourself. Which, we understand, won't be done necessarily by a human being. An electric chair. A gas chamber. A lethal injection. Nobody from that jury is going to stab you to death. The judge isn't going to shoot you in the head. Someone in another room will flip the switch or push the button. This is to emphasize the notion that people are not killing here. The State is doing the killing. If that sounds like a loophole, it probably looks a lot like a hangman's noose. 

Unless you sign up to be part of the state, in the form of an army. Or a police force. Suddenly your opportunities for killing go way up. Thou shalt not kill unless you happen to be a highly trained killer with orders to do just that. There have been plenty of horrible things done by humans to one another, and most of them don't end up having to pay for those acts with their lives. Sometimes they get promoted. 

Maybe it's time to stop pretending that the death penalty is useful. 

For anyone or anything.