Death in Texas

Derrick Sonnier was scheduled to receive a lethal injection today for the murder of Melody Flowers and her two year old son Patrick in 1991. It was scheduled to be the first execution in Texas since September, and comes after U.S. Supreme Court upheld lethal injection as a proper method of capital punishment. Sonnier committed a ferocious and despicable act, but does he deserve to die?

The death penalty can at times be one of the hardest things to oppose. How do you argue that a man like Sonnier, who brutally murdered two innocent people, does not deserve to die? The truth is it is important to realize that when you oppose the death penalty you are defending the rights of the worst criminals of our society. Also, despite your opinion on the death penalty, those that have been sentenced to die have committed horrendous acts and have affected friends and families forever. However, it is much more than defending the rights of criminals.

The system of capital punishment is a system which can allow for astutely no error. Because it is a system designed to take human lives there can be no room for error, because a system of capital punishment that has any errors will kill innocent people. There have been 129 exonerations in twenty-six different states. If there have been that many mistakes, how reasonable would it be to assume that an innocent person has been executed.

One of the arguments for the death penalty is deterrence. Between the years of 1996 and 2006 the national average murder rate fluctuated between 5.5 and 7.4. There are two states that do not have the death penalty, Michigan and Alaska, whose average murder rates where above the national average, and for four of those years Alaska’s murder rate was below the national average. There are twenty states that have the death penalty whose average murder rates where above the national average. If the death penalty deterred murders, then the murder rates for states that have the death penalty should be lowers than those that do not have the death penalty.

Murder is committed for one of three reasons, profit, passion, or compulsion. If someone is willing to kill for financial or any other kind of gain then they are usually convinced that they will not be caught. If the motivation for someone to kill is passion then they are killing during a time in which they are not in full use of their senses and are not aware of or do not care about the consequences of their actions. If someone is killing because of compulsion, then they are unable to control their actions despite the consequences.

There are also social and economic factors. The percentage of whites executed since 1976 is fifty-seven percent, while the percentage of blacks executed is thirty-four percent, and on death row forty-five percent of inmates are white while forty-two percent of inmates are black. Since 1977, blacks and whites have been the victims of murders in almost equal numbers, yet 80% of the people executed in that period were convicted of murders involving white victims. Who receives the death penalty is determined by several factors, included social status, economic status, and skin color of both the accused and the victim.

There are arguments based in religion, particularly in Christianity, used to argue for the death penalty despite many denominations adopting official positions in opposition to the death penalty. The following Christian denominations are proponents of the abolition of the death penalty: American Baptists, Eastern Orthodox Churches, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church, Methodist Churches, Presbyterian Churches, Roman Catholic Church, Reformed Church in America, and the United Church of Christ.

Because humans are self aware and are aware what is happening to their surroundings, the death penalty can never be humane. The threat of death itself is a form of torture. For proponents of lethal injection a study by the medical journal the Lancet in 2005 (The Lancet, Volume 365, Page 1412, April 16, 2005) found that in 43 out of 49 executed inmates studied that there was lower levels of anesthetic than required for surgery. Also, twenty-one of those inmates were found to have levels low enough to suggest awareness. The act of lethal injection does not make death easier for the inmates being executed; lethal injection makes the execution of inmates easier for those performing the execution.

Unfortunately, the death penalty is something that the majority of Americans are in favor of, but that does not mean that those that stand in opposition of the death penalty should be discouraged. In a 2007 Gallup poll, sixty-nine percent of Americans supported the death penalty, and for the last two decades the percentage of Americans supporting the death penalty has remained constant. However, that poll also shows that thirty-one percent of Americans are forced to kill against their will.

For every human being that we execute a piece of our collective humanity is lost, and killing Derrick Sonnier will do nothing but extinguish another piece of our humanity. There is going to be a day when we discover that we have executed an innocent person. On that day, we will all have something in common with Derrick Sonnier; we will all be murderers.

Derrick Sonnier was scheduled to be executed today at 6:00p.m. (Central Time) in Huntsville, Texas, but Sonnier was granted a stay by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for a review of the execution policy.

Death Penalty Resources:

National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

Death Penalty Information Center

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