The DEATH Penalty

I don't understand capital punishment. If killing is illegal, then killing is illegal, right? As a kid, I couldn't even understand how war could be legal. (In many ways, i still don't.)

Last night, it took a prisoner in Oklahoma 43 painful minutes to die. I don't understand this either. i have, sadly, had friends who over-dosed painlessly and died quickly. Maybe the state should try heroin...? or ambien?

By the way, European countries won't sell us the drugs we used to use for lethal injection, because we use them for the death penalty. Other countries see our barbarism and cut us off. What an embarrassment.

Still, who really cares how the person dies, it's the fact that we're killing someone. Two wrongs don't make a right. When did an eye for an eye come back in fashion?

And of course, we hear about juries making mistakes. (We know they do, right - OJ was innocent.) We're human. We're flawed.

But even if we were right 100% of the time, the death penalty is still wrong. And expensive. It costs us more for a person to go through the entire appeals process and to live on death row, than it costs us to support a life imprisonment.

All my life, i was an atheist, and i would still proclaim that only God can take a life. I know it even more now.