When we think of the term ‘human sacrifice’ our minds may leap to the Saturnalia of pointless savagery that marked the Aztec appeasements to vengeful deities, the Martian appetite for cruelty that we are told was an act of devotion for the worshippers of Moloch, in more recent times the banditry of the Thuggee cult may be of note, as may the animalistic tendencies of the Leopard Society of West Africa, or to my more fairly minded readers the false accusations of blood libel that instilled in vicious mobs the urge to level Jewish homes and massacre unarmed and essentially defenceless people in pursuit of the Pogrom. Yet, the practice persists, not to appeal a supernatural artifice, or to ensure the coming of the vitalising rain, but to satisfy the vengeful appetites of a populace that bays for blood. Norman Mailer once suggested with characteristic irony that the death penalty should be televised in order to force the populace to witness the results of their political decisions, the more I think on the topic the more I consider him in the right. Let there be no mistake that the most powerful country in the world, the last superpower stands imperiously on clumsy legs trampling her own dispossessed, a nation with the potential to be truly revolutionary in a capacity that is entirely historically unique, the lungs that breathed life into the United States were possessed by great men, a federal republic founded on the principles of the Enlightenment remains addicted to mankind’s grisly ancient vice.

Despite claims to the contrary it is often those who support the Death Penalty whose arguments are saturated in emotion, and the cheapest, most populist variety at that, the defenders of state endorsed murder love to toss about the term ‘closure’ as a catchall response to any humanistic objections, an exalted word which somehow forgives them the burden of supplying a line of reasoning and moral argument for their gutless position. I will concede, violence is not inherently immoral; the same bullets that may mercilessly rip through civilians in the office of a satirical magazine have a particularly pleasant effect on my morale and facial expression when they perform the same action through Jihadists, fascists and their irksome ilk. But is it really a fair comparison? A criminal neutralised in his capacity to harm others, sitting in a cell, awaiting his turn to die in the fickle pursuit of an arbitrary sense of safety and the unrelenting killer strolling through the field of bodies he has just finished creating, a simpletons smile on his face and a cold war era Kalashnikov dangling from his hip, begging his God for a bystander to slaughter, or rape, or both. It does nothing for society to kill a defenceless person, regardless of what they have done, except brutally repudiate the notion that the state is any better than a common thug.

Some may attempt to argue for the death penalty from a religious perspective, wishing the tendrils of theology to seep into the state thus dissolving it into the visceral and solipsistic mire of theocracy, to these individuals I will happily point out that IS are recruiting and will welcome any murder enthusiasts with mirthless grins and half-witted promises of paradise. So please, let the door hit you on the way out, it might knock some damn sense into you. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is a primitive method of justice, derived from ugly necessity during the infancy of our species; it commits the base act of reducing the distributers of justice to the petty status of those they ought to stand against.

I will conclude, I think, with an example from recent years that strikes a particularly painful chord, I will confess that it is not a usual case, or one that has received much attention, but I consider it emblematic of everything wrong with the Death Penalty. In 1992 Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton (who for the record is easily one of the most ethically impoverished, politically unreliable, and intellectually deceitful politicians that the Western world has seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall and that, ladies and gentleman, is saying something!) executed via lethal injection Rickey Ray Rector, a man whose faculties had abandoned him following a suicide attempt which permanently disfigured his brain, and was considered by most medical and legal authorities unable to stand trial, let alone understand the process of law and thus the penalty that he was to pay for an act that he could not even remember. Several events that took place over the course of this particular case of so called ‘justice’ manage to stir both pity and a sense of tragic futility that messily stomps upon the weary sentiments attached to our most basic mammalian concepts of empathy. After consuming most of his last meal Rector placed a piece of Pecan Pie aside, “for later”. When being readied in his distinctly bovine position for the finality of the abattoir he assisted his killer in finding a vein, mistakenly believing the preparation of his murder was a kind-hearted attempt to treat his sweeping neurological ailments. Rickey Ray Rector was not the same man who committed the murders that had put him on death row; he was an utterly broken creature, unfortunate enough to survive his act of desperation. He did not deserve to die. This particular case places a cosmological weight upon the chest, which refuses to be coaxed from its nebulous position with the promise of enjoyment or even a future change in the legal system of the United States which would constitutionally render capital punishment what we know it to be, cruel and unusual punishment, an atavistic practice best resigned to the days of fire-worship and flint arrowheads. Nothing will revive this man or the many who followed him or the many who took his place on that altar, and that sickens me.

Signed,

Dagenham.