Ohio politicians may be poised to consider whether the state might break its unofficial moratorium on the death penalty by following Alabama in using nitrogen gas to execute inmates.
Ohio hasn’t executed anyone since 2018. In 2020, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine declared lethal injection “no longer an option,” citing a federal judge’s ruling that the protocol could cause inmates “severe pain and needless suffering.”
Republican state Attorney General Dave Yost scheduled a news conference Tuesday to discuss “next steps to kickstart” Ohio’s capital punishment system. He has expressed support for the nitrogen gas method used for the first time in Alabama last week, when convicted murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, was put to death with nitrogen gas administered through a face mask to deprive him of oxygen.
Retribution is justice.
The world isn’t fair. Good people are starving, individuals are sitting in prison because they sold a harmless plant, women are forced to have children because they live in the wrong state or country, countless Americans go into crippling debt because they don’t work for an employer that gives them good medical insurance. These people deserve help, but in many (most?) cases, they’re not going to get it. Many of these people are “good” people, but life hasn’t given them what they deserve.
On the other hand, you have Kenneth Smith who murders a woman and ends up on death row. He does not deserve the same human rights afforded to people who treat their fellow humans with kindness. Why should he have a peaceful death; his victim didn’t. A prolonged and painful death is fitting to his crime, and it’s what he deserves based on his actions. It doesn’t offset the suffering of others who don’t deserve to suffer, but it helps to restore the balance.
I strongly disagree with the idea of “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” That assumes that the individual who’s serving justice (the executioner in this case) is doing something wrong. They’re not; they are ensuring that someone receives the treatment that they deserve. Justice is served, and there’s no “eye for an eye” to give in this case.
We may never agree on this, but I do not believe that my thinking is underdeveloped or immature. People who live a life that doesn’t cause harm to others should have every advantage in the world that they can; if I can do something in my own life to help achieve this, then I’m certainly willing to. People who live a life that causes pain and suffering to others should receive the same treatment, and while it’s not in my power to make this happen, I’m certainly happy that others can.
and this is precisely what the underdeveloped me of years past would have said as well.
if personal development is some sort of continuum, with the me of now being different from the me of the past, then I hope the me of the future is wise enough to forgive the me of the now for my errors, seeking correction, not retribution - and empathetic enough to apply this same wish to others.
My life experience has been the opposite. When I was in my 20’s and even my early 30’s, I very likely would have agreed with you; I probably would have even argued against the death penalty when I was a young adult. The older I get, the more I realize that some human beings are just pure trash, and they should be treated as such. Everyone should be afforded human rights, and everyone should be treated with kindness and respect, until the point that their actions cause harm to others.
As part of your own personal development, I hope that at some point you learn to take off the rose-colored glasses that you use to look at humanity and realize that while the world can be a beautiful place, it can also be a cesspool, and that punishing the people who actively try to make the world into a cesspool is simply the right thing to do.