The Face Of Adversity
by: Dominique Green
For the longest, capital punishment has been engraved into the mind of society as a necessity which protects the value of human life from the most heinous of acts perpetrated against it.

These horrendous acts are often described in text book fashion as being so abominable and monstrous that the only way to send a clear cut message back to their dispenser is by reversing the tables of lawlessness in having them condemned.

Tough talking polititco's have gone so far as to make it an art of painting the bleakest of pictures of those who are not merciless in avenging the death of victims. 

Feeding off of the sentiment their words are allowed to create. Money to prosecute capital cases have skyrocketed; the age eligibility for ones sentenceable for death has dropped; and the appeal processes have been dramatically shortened.

Nothing has been as significant a feat as the right victims families now have to witness executions. The idea behind it was that they would be allowed to find closure.

Needless to say, those same ideas are why capital punishment has now became the focal point of international attention.

In their zestful zeal to solve capital crimes, prosecutors have pulled no punches to come up with viable suspects. One man currently sentenced to die in Texas had his family "held at gunpoint" by authorities, until he gave a fitting confession telling officials what "they wanted to hear."

This same level of tyranny reverberates throughout the system; as district attorneys are paid exuberant amounts to become skilled warriors of condemnation; while court appointed attorneys on the other hand are given no funds, and are forced to defend clients with methods completely lacking competence.


 		 The shortening of the appeals process has only helped to make matters worse. Since it required the elimination of all fundamental fairness requirements. (Requirements that once welcomed evidence to light, which could possibly prove a persons innocence, for the courts reviewing.) The courts have now devoled into an assembly line of death. Cases aren't reviewed. Their merits are not tried and tested. They are simply rubberstamped and pushed one step closer to the hands of death.

Therefore it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to victims families and loved ones seeking closure; who journey to the death chamber intent on facing down what has been described to them to be the vilest and most coldblooded of creatures; only to find a man smiling and waving at them while lying on his deathbed without a care in the world. Who when asked his last words, only then makes it don on them: He's retarded!

This is not the kind of system even the most vengeful of loved ones should want. Which is why the international attention brought forth on the American society as a whole is clearly necessary.

We need to take a step back and look at ourselves in the mirror to see who we've become, because we are no longer a society that merely answers the acts of the ill-fated. We have taken it one step further. We have become just like them ... if not worse.