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PERSECUTED YOUTH
I turned 23 last year (November 99).
The death penalty was reinstated the year I was born (1976). I am
still young but the ideals behind capital punishment are old and primitive.
I was 17 at the time of my arrest.
According to the law I was a minor. Because of my age I was
restricted from certain activities. I could not vote, join the military
or sign contracts (without parental guidance), purchase tobacco or alcohol,
and a number of other things. These restrictions were designed to
protect me from the harm of others and the harm of myself.
Yet when a child commits a heinous act, he or she automatically becomes
beyond redemption, subject to the toughest laws of the land such as in
my case…
How outrageously barbaric have we become
as a society that we execute children?
Communist China, renown for human rights
violations has stopped executing people below the age of eighteen.
If the most oppressive country in the world can do this, why can't we?
!
Why are children expected to take complete
responsibility for their crimes like adults when they can not fully understand
that kind of responsibility?
It's absolutely counterproductive to
throw away young lives this way.
Proponents of capital punishment often
make statements such as "you were tried and convicted by a jury of your
peers, accept your punishment !"
In some cases they do make a small
point, however a minor cannot serve on a jury, so how then can he or she
be tried by a jury of their peers? They can't… If the state wishes
to deter kids from committing violent crime they need to lead by example.
Do not show them that you should kill people you do not know how to forgive.
I am not trying to belittle the victims of violent crime or their families,
and I am not attempting to minimize the crimes themselves, Children
who kill deserve to be punished and victims deserve to see justice.
Justice would be 10 to 20 years of the childs life spent learning their
lesson and contributing something back to society. Not sticking them
in a cell for 15 years while their minds rot in the fear of death,
them executing them.
T.R.Duncan
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