Colosseum honours New Mexico for dropping death penalty
by Anthony Smith (staff) | Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
The ‘Land of Enchantment’ state is being honoured in Rome this evening with State governor Bill Richardson and Archbishop of Santa Fe Michael J. Sheehan in attendance. The reason? New Mexico has just repealed capital punishment.
The flag of New Mexico
The infamous amphitheatre, the site of barbarous cruelty and death in the name of entertainment during ancient times, has become a symbol for the modern city of Rome’s crusade against the death penalty. When the lights go on tonight, illuminating the Colosseum with the New Mexico flag, it will be one in a chain of such events stretching back to November 2002 when the Comunità di Sant’Egidio, a Roman order for lay Roman Catholics, instituted the tradition to celebrate the UN-sanctioned World Life Day – Cities Against the Death Penalty. The Life Day takes place every 30 November in honour of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany’s 1786 decision to abolish the death penalty, when it became the first ‘modern’ state to turn its back on capital punishment.
A delegation of New Mexico dignitaries headed by the governor and archbishop will attend the lighting ceremony following an audience with the Pope.
While anti-death penalty campaigners welcome the New Mexico decision there is a growing body of opinion in the United States that believes further debate is needed before ’Life Without Parole’ (LWOP) becomes accepted as the only alternative to capital punishment.
April 15th, 2009 at 14:49
It is imporant to look closely at the details of the New Mexico legislation and the underlying political currents. The new law will not help the two men who await death sentences in New Mexico prisons. More important, while the headlines say New Mexico has abolished the death penalty, the reality is that one form of the death penalty has been traded for another: Life in prison without any possibility of parole (LWOP).
Recenlty The Nation, a respected liberal magazine, published a column critical of this Faustian bargain by Alexander Cockburn headlined, “Worse than death.” A large newspaper in Texas, the Dallas Morning News, heartily endorsed LWOP in an editorial calling LWOP “a living death.”
In America the gallows, firing squad, gas chamber, lethal injection have eventually become controversial and then unpopular; each method involves the state taking an active role in killing. Now many abolitionists and politicians are endorsing a *passive* form of capital punishment - life in prison without parole (LWOP).
The American criminal justice system loves to lock people up and throw away the key - some sentences are over 100 years. There is a need for sentencing reform but the push for LWOP makes such work more difficult. And, unlike death sentences, there are fewer procedural safeguards for those sentenced to LWOP.
Watch how the impulse for vengeance mutates.
April 15th, 2009 at 16:06
Too bad that the money being wasted by the church and the government on this trip was not spent on taking care of the needy.
April 17th, 2009 at 19:48
So, Bill, we in New Mexico should just let killers go free, after forgiving them their deed.
You are nuts.
March 3rd, 2010 at 01:59
A life sentence is a death sentence. Much research has been done on 1) what happens to people incarcerated for 20+ years and many become nearly new people. 2) There is no longer any chance of redemption in this society.
No we shouldn’t let killers go free, that’s an absurd statement. But we should stop feeding the prison nation, which by the way for those of you who hate corporate America, is an enormous and hungry money-making machine. Each prisoner must be looked at with fresh eyes, recognizing a prior “bad act” of criminal nature occurred, but that perhaps this or that prisoner has changed enough to become a member of society.
Life without parole is cruel and unusual punishment. It’s wrong.
May 5th, 2010 at 19:40
I am not enthralled by that. That was soothing. I get over it pretty quick.
July 23rd, 2010 at 20:38
A single separate voice in Msnbc inside the Television show. He still carries a genuinely tough immigration quote. He graduated within the Harvard University. Now he possesses her a single Broadcast Show. He could not such as this United states president.