Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Picture of Ruth Snyder's Execution @ Sing Sing 1928
Violence and the Word by Robert Cover
I found Robert Covers Violence and the Word to be interesting but a little dry
for me. It definitely had a unique perspective on what violence is, so I
appreciated that. It was also a very straightforward read, to me I found it
easier to read and interpret over Camu Reflections’ of the Guillotine.
In Violence of the Word, violence is not described as that street corner fight that you've witnesses after school neither the gun shooting massacres we read in the paper that occur at schools across the nation. He says this; "Interpretations in law also constitute justifications for violence which has already occurred or which is about to occur. When interpreters have finished their work, they frequently leave behind victims whose lives have been torn apart by these organized, social practices of violence"(Cover 1601). So Violence of legal acts are organized and social according to Cover.
It doesn’t seem that Cover is just talking about sentences of capital punishment as we focused on in Camus essay. He says "A judge articulates her understanding of a text, and as a result, somebody loses his freedom, his property, his children, even his life" (Cover 1601). This is usually true, when someone goes to jail most likely they will lose any worldly possessions you once has, social services will probably take their children if they had any and the way they once lived their life will be gone and changed forever even after they leave jail. Also depending on the crime they committed most jobs of public service run CORI/SORI checks so the job market pool that most people have to draw from just shrunk dramatically. If we look at the violence of legal acts the way Cover describes you can see how it is violent and destructive to someone’s life.
Is society disappointed when a Judge doesn’t rule in a violent act for a criminal? Think of the Casey Anthony’s case. I chose this case for example because it remains to be talked about on the news today in the new year of 2012. It seems with the countless protesters that people are very disappointed that the Judges legal interpretation did not lead to "more violent sentencing". Even if she did escape the wrath of legal violence will she not endure the violence of the American media system? People’s family have moved after large cases as such as this one to an area where they were not known.
I agree with most of the things that Covers discusses in his essay. In a class that I took in a prior semester I had to analyze a lot of hate crime cases that took place within that last twenty years. It was interesting to see how these cases turned out. You have to wonder if the law supplies any justice at all to some individual in those cases. When you stand before a judge you want to hope and think that this is going to be a human to human interaction. The truth is that the judge is going to interpret the case with reference to legal texts. So its not a very humanized interaction. I would hope that the law would punish according to those who are truly innocent and those that are guilty and need to serve time.
In Violence of the Word, violence is not described as that street corner fight that you've witnesses after school neither the gun shooting massacres we read in the paper that occur at schools across the nation. He says this; "Interpretations in law also constitute justifications for violence which has already occurred or which is about to occur. When interpreters have finished their work, they frequently leave behind victims whose lives have been torn apart by these organized, social practices of violence"(Cover 1601). So Violence of legal acts are organized and social according to Cover.
It doesn’t seem that Cover is just talking about sentences of capital punishment as we focused on in Camus essay. He says "A judge articulates her understanding of a text, and as a result, somebody loses his freedom, his property, his children, even his life" (Cover 1601). This is usually true, when someone goes to jail most likely they will lose any worldly possessions you once has, social services will probably take their children if they had any and the way they once lived their life will be gone and changed forever even after they leave jail. Also depending on the crime they committed most jobs of public service run CORI/SORI checks so the job market pool that most people have to draw from just shrunk dramatically. If we look at the violence of legal acts the way Cover describes you can see how it is violent and destructive to someone’s life.
Is society disappointed when a Judge doesn’t rule in a violent act for a criminal? Think of the Casey Anthony’s case. I chose this case for example because it remains to be talked about on the news today in the new year of 2012. It seems with the countless protesters that people are very disappointed that the Judges legal interpretation did not lead to "more violent sentencing". Even if she did escape the wrath of legal violence will she not endure the violence of the American media system? People’s family have moved after large cases as such as this one to an area where they were not known.
I agree with most of the things that Covers discusses in his essay. In a class that I took in a prior semester I had to analyze a lot of hate crime cases that took place within that last twenty years. It was interesting to see how these cases turned out. You have to wonder if the law supplies any justice at all to some individual in those cases. When you stand before a judge you want to hope and think that this is going to be a human to human interaction. The truth is that the judge is going to interpret the case with reference to legal texts. So its not a very humanized interaction. I would hope that the law would punish according to those who are truly innocent and those that are guilty and need to serve time.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Camu's Reflections of the Guillotine Review
After reading Reflections of the Guillotine by Camu it got me thinking about my own stance on capital punishment and the death penalty in the US. Camu definitely expresses throughout his essay that he does not agree with it in many ways. It is odd to think about the Guillotine as the method that was once used for the death penalty. It was interesting to travel back in time to see how the death penalty functioned in society and how it was conducted. It does make me wonder if capital punishment was less humane in Camu time, or is it less humane now. It does seem that a blade falling and cutting your head off is a pretty quick no nonsense approach but the picture view of this method does display itself as being very violent way of death (see Death by Guillotine video on Jenny's blog). I think that the Electric chair that the United States used for some time to put people to death for their crimes was probable closest form of execution that was as gruesome as a Guillotine. We now use lethal injection as our method of putting someone to death.
Now Camu believed that if a society were to have executions of criminals that they needed to be made more public so that society could fully take responsibility of their actions and could see and witness the end result of putting a man to death. I think he made a good point; people should have access to view an execution that is going to be carried out. Maybe we would change our minds about having the death sentence with lethal injections. When it is kept quiet and private it seems that society is trying to hide something. Why do people try to hide things? Usually because they did something that was wrong and they don't want the other person to know about it. Many people argue that to have capital punishment is a cheaper than life in prison without chance of parole. So I looked up the numbers; they estimate that a life without parole case costs approximately $1 million dollars and that a death penalty case cost somewhere between $1.2 million to $3.2 million dollars more than a life without parole case. I mean why do we really want to put people to death, is it really a financial reason or do people believes it reigns more psychological violence on someone’s mind that is going to be executed as Camu suggests. To me it would be more psychological torture to be imprisoned and confined to a small space for life. Death would seem like an escape from that type of prison, maybe it’s just a personal preference.
In modern day society most people currently have a clearer conscious on the death penalty because they think lethal injections are more painless. If we reason with what Camu says then we truly cannot be sure that death is completely painless with lethal injections. Modern day science has still not given us the knowledge of what someone is currently thinking in terms of pain while they are being executed and we cannot project our self to the "other side"; if you believe that a person who dies leaves this world and travel to a spirit world and asks them how they felt. What Modern Science does tell us is that human bodies react differently to medications that are processed in the body so there really is no way to tell how someone would react to a lethal injection. In the past people have made mistakes and were not given enough medication and they had to repeat the process over. This also does not seem like an efficient way to perform an execution. I find it interesting that one of the drugs that is in the lethal dose is a paralytic drug. They say this is to dignify the death of the criminal that is being executed. You have to wonder if it really just masking the gruesomeness of that method for the viewer who have to witness the death because without the paralytic the body would have some involuntary muscle movements.
Okay, my last input into the discussion is a follow-up to a previous lecture from my Bioethics professor. We discussed how in America we believe in putting a criminal to death if they meet the legal requirements in their state. What about those individuals who are not criminals but want to end their life with the means of lethal medication because they have been diagnosed and are living with a terminal disease. All 50 states in America currently have euthanasia as illegal ( Washington, Montana and Oregon have Physician Assisted Suicide which is when a physician prescribed medication that would give you the means of achieving death on your own.) It seems backwards that our legal system would allow a legal death for criminals as a way of punishment for their crimes but will not allow terminally ill patients the same legal right as a way of peace for their suffering.
*Fun Fact: Did you know that only 35 states use only lethal injections. Other states may still use the electric chair, gas chamber, hanging or a firing squad to put a criminal to death if lethal injection is found unconstitutional or by choice of the convicted criminal. Don’t believe it? Check it out @ http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/methods-execution
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