Austin Myers, 19, Anthony Glen de Malmanche, 52 and Marvin Louis Guy, 49.
These are just three men in the world today that will be killed by capital punishment in our lifetime.
These names probably mean nothing to you and really, they probably shouldn’t. Nor should their deaths be on your conscience.
The punishment they’ll receive was declared in court based on their actions; a jury of people will pick their fate.
Myers would be Ohio’s youngest man sent to death row after killing a childhood friend during a burglary according to USA Today.
Glen de Malmanche is facing the death penalty after he allegedly smuggled 1.7 kilograms of methamphetamine into Bali, an article in The Guardian stated.
Guy was a target of a no-knock raid on May 9, 2014, when officers broke into his house.
Alarmed, Guy and his wife sought to protect themselves and fired at the intruders. He now faces capital murder as well as three accounts of attempted capital murder and as a result, the death penalty.
These men can’t wash their hands and start a clean slate. Everything comes with a price to pay, but who the hell is to say what a life is worth?
Is it justice to take one’s life because they took the breath of someone else?
We all live in this one nation, supposedly ‘under God,’ yet we kill. I thought God said thou shalt not kill — so we uphold this and say murder is illegal, until the government gives you a gun and tells you to go across seas and to shoot your enemy. So we tell people to treat others as they want to be treated — and then we strap them to electric chairs and take their lives away. So we say every life is worth something — yet this system we live under kills everyday.
“See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life,” Deuteronomy 32:39 reads.
Only God has the right to give and take away life, no man can say what a life is worth.
Even doctors believe no single life is greater than another. A man could be suffering from chronic pain for years and just want to let go, but is too weak to kill himself. Euthanasia is illegal, but capital punishment still stands? Stands for what? Justice? Hope?
Two wrongs don’t make a right and killing someone for killing someone else, or in some cases for smuggling drugs, is wrong. I’m sure a lot of prisoners might even prefer to die than spend the rest of their lives being raped and tortured in prison.
The men being killed on death row won’t feel anything. Their innocent family members will feel something.
The correctional officers that are taking a life away are going to feel something when they go home later and try and sleep. The judge that sentenced a man to death is going to feel something.
Not to mention the system fails all the time and innocent people are sent to jail. Many are even sent to death row as innocent men. For example, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed ten years ago for killing his three daughters in an arson attack.
New evidence in 2014 showed he may have been innocent. The youngest person executed in the United States was George Stinney, 12 years old. He was electrocuted in South Carolina in 1944, facing two murder charges.
More than 70 years later, a judge threw out the conviction, calling it a “great injustice,” according to USA Today. University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross lead a study which determined that at least four percent of people on death row were and are innocent.
No matter what, now they are gone. We can’t give life, but we think we deserve the power to take it. America the beautiful isn’t so beautiful when we believe in killing our people for justice. Should they pay? Should these criminals suffer like their victims did? Yes, probably, but I don’t believe in killing people. Two wrongs don’t make a right. I just wish it was as simple as that.
Bethany Ricciardi can be contacted at bricciardi@keene-equinox.com
