The Wrong Direction

The Philadelphia Inquirer carried an editorial today that pointed out the frightening direction that "justice" is turning. The April 16th Supreme Court ruling re-opened the door to allow states to use lethal injection and ended the temporary national moratorium on the death penalty. This, in and of itself, is frightening. Lethal injection is not a perfected means of execution. In an NPR article from last week, we learned that

In Florida, no one has been executed since a lethal injection went wrong in 2006. Sterling Ivy, spokesman for Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, says "the inmate did not pass away for 16 minutes after the execution had started."

But within hours of the Supreme Court's decision, several states had signed death warrants in order to get the process rolling again for those inmates on death row.

Before the sun went down on the Supreme Court ruling, officials in several states — including Mississippi, Oklahoma, Virginia and Georgia — took steps to move ahead on executions.

The okay to torture, the rush to execute inmates on death row, and now another case that could extend capital punishment to non-homicide crimes? It's downright scary. Where are we heading as a country? Just when I think that we're getting something right (most Americans' disapproval for the Iraq war or New Jersey's repeal of capital punishment), there's a whole bunch of evidence to the contrary.

The editorial from today's Philly Inquirer mentions the fact that several people are wrongly convicted and then executed in this country. They cite an organization called the Innocence Project, a non-profit law firm that works to get inmates freed from prison, based on DNA evidence. I had the privilege of knowing some folks from IP-NO, as it was called for short in New Orleans. The agency has done a tremendous job granting release for 12 innocent, wrongly-convicted individuals since its inception 7 years ago. The other organization in their building, the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center's A Fighting Chance program works on the flip side of the coin. They work to reduce capital punishment sentences to life imprisonment. They work with the guilty, but recognize that no matter how heinous the crime, that a life is worth saving. I also knew an employee at this program, and he had to read case files full of the gory details of these crimes. He was invited into the homes of the families, as he tried to piece together the case and work toward releasing these individuals from death row. Talk about commitment to all life. Neither of these agencies are faith-based, but they embrace the church's teaching on life and human dignity. And they are saving lives each day. This gives me just a bit of hope within this "justice" system that is embracing the culture of death.