New Mexico gets rid of death penalty

New Mexico gets rid of death penalty

The rulers of the territory of New Mexico recently decided to do away with the "death penalty". Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I am one of those who feels the only legitimate death penalty is carried out at the moment of the attack by the intended victim or a rescuer.

There is no government anywhere that I feel is honest enough to be trusted with power over life and death. They demonstrate time after time, year after year, that they can't be trusted with small things, why on earth would we entrust them with the most important thing there is? Too many on death row have been vindicated, after decades of imprisonment, by DNA evidence. Getting a conviction, so as to appear to be "doing something", is more important than finding the truth to those who depend on an active "criminal justice system" to make money. Lastly, governments always turn to their court system to punish those who oppose or annoy them. Those like you and me.

"What about crime?" you may ask. I don't believe that keeping the death penalty as an option really reduces crime; every attacker thinks they will be the exception to the rule; the one who gets away with it. Once a person is captured they are no longer a threat to the general population. When the killer is no longer a threat, killing him is revenge rather than justice. It doesn't return the victim to life. Nor does it truly protect any future victims. The only thing that does that with any success is a universally armed population, which New Mexico can, and should, have.

Fellow prisoners should be protected from the truly violent predators (rather than the "crime of passion" types). Of course, no one but violent attackers should be in prison in the first place. Others, those whose crimes are of a financial nature, should be working on their restitution rather than living off the stolen money of the state. Those other people who were kidnapped by the state for counterfeit "crimes" which harm no one (in other words, the majority of those in prison) should not be incarcerated to begin with. Not in a rational society, anyway.