As a father, a citizen, and someone who believes deeply in human potential, I have spent years struggling with the idea of justice and the role of the death penalty in our society. The more I reflect on it, the more I find myself unable to reconcile the idea of taking a life – even when that life has caused unimaginable harm.
I do not believe the death penalty serves anyone. Not the victim. Not the perpetrator. Not the families left in the aftermath. And certainly not society as a whole.
I understand the instinctive reaction to violence. I’ve felt that anger, that pull toward retribution, the belief that some crimes are so horrific that the only answer is death. It’s human to want justice, but what does justice truly mean? Is it about balance, an eye for an eye? Or is it something more – something that asks us to go deeper, to acknowledge the failures that led someone down a violent path in the first place?
The Potential for Change
One of the strongest reasons I oppose the death penalty is simple: I believe in human transformation. I believe people are more than the sum of their worst mistakes. Given the right support and the chance to grow, people can change. I am not naive enough to think that every person sentenced to die is capable of remorse or rehabilitation, but I also know this: we have executed people who were. And we cannot bring them back.
We cannot ignore the reality that our systems create violence as much as they punish it. The lack of mental health care, the easy access to weapons, the way poverty and desperation push people to the edge – these are things we could address. But instead, we choose to focus on the end result, on the moment of the crime, as though the path leading there was inevitable.
What if, instead of waiting for people to commit the kind of crime that lands them on death row, we invested in the kind of interventions that could have changed their course? What if we saw violence not just as something to punish, but as something we had a responsibility to prevent?
The Families Left Behind
The death penalty does not just take a life. It destroys families, including those of the condemned. A person sentenced to death does not exist in a vacuum. They are someone’s child, someone’s sibling, someone’s parent. The pain of losing a loved one to violence is unimaginable—but the pain of losing someone to an execution, watching the world decide they are unworthy of redemption, is something we rarely talk about.
I think about my own daughters and how much I want to protect them, not just from harm, but from becoming hardened to the suffering of others. I want them to see the world with empathy, to understand that people are complicated, that lives are shaped by circumstances, that no one is beyond redemption unless we decide they are.
If we truly care about justice, then we need to ask harder questions. Not just What punishment does this crime deserve? but How did we get here? and How do we stop this from happening again?
I don’t believe the death penalty brings peace. If anything, it perpetuates a cycle of violence, a belief that the only answer to harm is more harm. And in the end, it leaves us with more broken lives—the ones who die, and the ones who remain behind, forever asking if there was another way.
– Ed, never incarcerated
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