Judging from recent news articles and various governors of states like Connecticut and just this week, Washington State’s Jay Inslee placing a moratorium about the unfairness, inhumane, unusual and cruel punishment being inflicted upon those who have committed heinous and unspeakable murders and atrocities on their victims it is very difficult to accept the arguments put forth by those that are opposed to imposing the execution(s) of these murderers.(Please see my letter to Governor Inslee at the end of this blog.)
Thesis One:
The death penalty is the punishment inflicted upon murderers
as that is the penalty our justice system hands down. Executing a convicted
murderer is the punishment imposed on an offender for wrong doing once again,
emphasis mine.
Thesis Two:
Opinion: Executing a murderer is nothing more than an act of
revenge, too expensive, cruel and inhumane.
Opposing Opinion: Again, I agree with the anti-death penalty
movement that yes it is society’s act of vengeance or perhaps placates only the
survivors of murdered loved ones like myself. Again, however, revenge is
defined as “to inflict injury or punishment in return for an injury, insult,
etc. a chance to retaliate. I as a victim survivor, no matter how badly I feel
or am hurting because my loved one was murdered I don’t have the right to retaliate
by killing the person that killed someone that I loved, but the
state through the constitutional and lawful application of the criminal justice
system does. If the state’s right to impose the death penalty is taken away
then I believe there will be a rise in vigilantism.
As far as the death penalty being an imposition of a cruel and unusual punishment against murderers who have committed heinous acts against their victims when they murdered them, I have no empathy or sympathy for them. To the anti-death penalty proponents as they worry the person being executed is in pain I want them to think about the victim and how they perhaps felt when they were being murdered as I have every day since that horrible night in July of 1993. In 2000, some seven years after my son was murdered I wrote a poem which in part reads; “Even after years of appeals and delay, irrefutable, corroborating evidence presented again and again yet for their murderous unspeakable acts the voices are many and wrong when accountability is dismissed as lawyers and organizations beg for yet another stay. Unheard, overlooked and ignored is the wails of the victim's mother, as she was deprived of saying a final good bye when the life of her child was brutally ended by another. “Or the horror of discovering the atrocity and violence done to her son or daughter, left in pain to die alone without benefit or comfort of spiritual advisor crying out in an unheard wail as they were murdered in a manner or by a means of a cruel act, and a commission of a slaughter. “No nothing can be compared or is there anything more horrible than the wail of a mother that through violence has lost a child to murder, nor do those opposed to the death penalty have any concern about the suffering, horror and pain inflicted upon the victim.”
Thesis Three:
When the U.S. Supreme Court re-instituted the Death Penalty
as being constitutional in 1976 they did the correct thing in my opinion and
the real miscarriage of justice and infliction of cruel and unusual punishment
should not be shifted from the convicted murderers to the victims by revoking
or declaring the Death Penalty as being unconstitutional.
Governor Jay Inslee
Office of the Governor
PO Box 40002
Olympia, WA 98504-0002
February 28, 2014Office of the Governor
PO Box 40002
Olympia, WA 98504-0002
Dear Governor Inslee:
As a survivor of a murdered son, I think your decision to
place a moratorium on imposition of the death penalty is a gross miscarriage of
justice. As a victim’s rights advocate since 1993 when my son was murdered I
have witnessed first- hand the concern the secular progressive left has for the
rights of criminals while at the same time mocking justice for victims, even
labeling victim advocates like myself as professional victims. I can assure you
that isn’t the case.
Governor Inslee, if you don’t have the conviction to allow
the execution of guilty murderers who for the most part have been on death row
for more than a decade or two manipulating the system by appeal after appeal
then you shouldn’t be the Governor of Washington.
I have added to this letter an article I have written that
appears on my blog “Write Thoughts” expressing a differing opinion than yours
or your progressive friends, I hope you will take the time to read and think
about the plight of the victim as much as you do the murderers.
Respectfully yours,
Ralph L. Myers
Bellingham, WA