I woke early this morning in my mother’s household in Portland, Oregon. I quietly made a pot of coffee, fed the cat, and padded out into the cool November rain to get the morning paper for my mother, who reads it religiously every day. I don’t always look at it, but today I glanced at the headline, which brought genuine joy to my heart and tears to my eyes. It said “Kitzhaber blocks all executions”. Oregon’s Governor Kitzhaber, a doctor who had, of course, sworn to protect life, had struggled with the conflict between the will of the people (who had reinstated the death penalty in 1984) and his own conscience. Twice, in the 1990s, he’d allowed executions to proceed; but he was drawing the line this time. Besides his conscience, he highlighted the arbitrary nature of the law’s application, the expense of keeping most people on death row (much more costly than a normal ‘life in prison’ sentence), the dangers of wrongful convictions, as additional factors in his decision. He has now followed four other states (beginning with New York in 2004, followed by New Jersey in 2007, New Mexico in 2009, and Illinois last year) that have repealed their death penalty statutes. I hope this reflects a growing trend towards a more admirable, more civilized United States of America.
I have been against capital punishment since childhood. One of my first term papers, in high school, was on the subject. What I learned then strengthened my antagonism to this practice, and that antagonism has only grown as I’ve aged. My personal feelings have been reinforced by scientific advances that have allowed us to identify and correct many errors of conviction in the criminal justice system around the country. We pretend to be a progressive and humane nation. Yet too many of us condone this barbarism, this recidivism that harks back to humanity’s earliest days, no, to the animal kingdom itself.
I most sincerely and passionately applaud Kitzhaber’s action, and hope, even pray, that other governors and State Supreme Courts will follow suit. I do love my country; but I feel that it has generally been in error on this subject since 1984. We should not be taking each other’s lives.