Capital Punishment Or Capital Gain…

I received your address along with a letter from another inmate who is presently on death row. I agree with what you said about the death penalty being a cynical stepping-stone for politicians. I recently wrote a small article called “Capital Punishment or Capital Gain.” You may want to publish it in The New Abolitionist.

Over the years, many politicians have used the issue of capital punishment to secure political seats and gain higher office. They use “justice” as a shield to protect them so their real motives aren’t shown.

Prestige, money, power and fame are the things that have taken precedence instead of human lives. Whether a person is innocent or guilty really doesn’t matter as long as a conviction can be obtained.

Is this justice? The poor, minorities and social outcasts become victims of the system. Is not justice supposed to be equal, without respect to a person’s race or financial or social standing? Then how can capital punishment and justice even be considered remotely the same thing?

Capital punishment means death. In Alabama, politicians are saying that inmates who are sentenced to death are being housed on death row too long. They are saying that the appeals process is too slow. In recent years, people have been proven innocent and released back into society. If the appeals process had not been the way it is, sad to say, those people would have been executed.

How would justice be served then? As long as capital gain is the ulterior motive for capital punishment, there can never be justice in capital punishment.

James A. Johnson
AI S#Z657 Bed 5-65
William Donaldson Correctional Facility
100 Warrior Lane
Bessemer, AL 35023

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