Happy New Year! Texas has just performed the first US execution of 2017!

As of January 11, Christopher Wilkins was executed by means of lethal injection in the state of Texas. This is one of 25 executions already planned in 2017 across the United States of America. Now, I am not telling you this to speak on the morals of this man or his guilt or his innocence. I bring this to your attention in order to speak on the much broader issue of capital punishment and death row as it stands in the U.S.A. right now.

I do not agree with Capital Punishment any way you put it.

First and foremost. Capital Punishment does not align with my personal morals. I do not see that it is fit for a man, a state, or a federal government to be able to choose to bring an end to any human life. This includes the lives of criminals. This is not to say that I condone the actions of the murderer or the rapist.

In no way do I want to stand up and defend those heinous actions.

Instead, this is to say that I do not believe in the common saying "an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth." Personally, I think that makes the world blind and leaves us all drinking pureed foods through a straw. I think that there are other means by which we, as a society, can deal with criminals. Whether that be imprisonment or rehabilitation or what have you.

I also see an incredible fallacy in the system in which we execute Capital Punishment.

There are no federal regulations on what can incur Capital Punishment, and from criminal case to criminal case, what calls for the death penalty in one state, would not in another. This is unfair. If we, as a society and as a country, cannot decide on at least basic, and fundamental rules on what could possibly dictate Capital Punishment, then I feel as though it should be outlawed across the board. Now, I'm not saying these need to be specific guidelines put in place by the federal government to restrict Capital Punishment to the point where it is impossible for states to enact this punishment if they so see fit to do so. But I am saying, that we should agree on things like what degree of murder can Capital Punishment be considered under, and how many offenses can a criminal perform before Capital Punishment can be considered? I am asking for a basic understanding across the U.S.A. so that stealing an apple in one state does not get your hand cut off, while in another state you just have to pay a fine. (I know that this is an exaggeration, but you see my point.)

In addition to that, did you know that there are currently 2,905 individuals on Death Row? I sure did not until I sat down to do research for this article. (And boy, was I shocked to find that out.) In addition to the mass incarceration issue we have in our country, there are also nearly 3,000 people that have been convicted and sentenced to death that are on Death Row. Does this look like a problem to anyone else? These individuals can be on Death Row for more than twenty years. And they can experience incredible cruelty. Not even to mention the mental and emotional strain that this must cause. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to lose such hope in the system as to cause me to enact the 'dead man's right' and ask to be executed quicker, please and thank you. To me, this seems like cruel and unusual punishment in its own right. And last I checked, that was against the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. And according to DeathPenaltyInfo.org, it isn't just me who thinks this way:

"The length of time that U.S. inmates spend on death row has gotten increasingly longer in recent years, and raises questions about the constitutionality of this added punishment."

The slowness of the Capital Punishment system in the US is evident. And it is not right, by any means. Take for instance this story, also from DeathPenaltyInfo.org, about senior inmates on Death Row:

Some death row seniors committed crimes late in life, but many are there at such advanced age because of the inevitable slowness of the capital appeals process (Ibid). In 2004, a 74-year-old man was put to death in Alabama – the oldest inmate executed in the United States in more than six decades – for a murder he committed in 1977. Before his execution, J.B. Hubbard forgot who he was at times because of dementia. He suffered from colon and prostate cancer, and was so weak that other inmates sometimes walked him to the shower and combed his hair. (Washington Post, August 6, 2004).

Anyone else starting to think this is a little ridiculous?

Of those 3,000 people, did you then know that half of them were arrested in their twenties, and 11% of them were 19 or less when they committed their crime? I'm nineteen now. So if I were arrested in one of the states that enforce Capital Punishment for whatever crime and was then convicted to be put to death, the rest of my life would be gone. That is anywhere between 50-80 years of life taken away from me, because of something I did as an angsty teen. From teenagehood to your thirties, you are developing as a human person. You are learning morals and how to interact with society in addition to how you should properly function as an adult in the U.S.A. Now, that is not to say if I murdered someone at age nineteen that I should just be let off the hook because "these are the most formative years of my life." NO! Go right ahead, send me to prison. Make me learn a lesson. Rehabilitate me. That way, I have paid for my transgression, agreed with society that it is wrong to murder regardless of the reason, I feel guilt, and am ready to reenter society a new person. There is less of a strain on the incarceration system, decreased taxes, and all around better mental stability for the U.S. At least that's how I see it.

And all this is not even getting into the possibility of innocence.

This point goes along with my moral issues with Capital Punishment. I think we all can agree that humanity is fallible. And naturally, the institutions we create will not be perfect. The legal system is no exception to this rule. We convict the wrong people. Even given strong, scientific, "evidence." And even without such means, people are convicted, and people are sentenced to death. PEOPLE. You, me, your best friend. People are sentenced to death. Death. The end.

It's good then that Capital Punishment is reaching an all-time low in the US.

With just 20 executions performed in 2016 across the states and 29 convicted Death Sentences, I think we can work with this. I think that we can work on rehabilitation our legal system. Together, we can talk about this. Is it cruel to keep people on Death Row so long? Should we focus on punishment or rehabilitation? Should the legal system have the power to kill? It's our taxes, let's talk about what they go towards.