Capital punishment is an eternally debatable topic and polarizing for most people. Either one feels that a person who takes life should forfeit his own, or that such “eye for an eye” justice is wrong.
The most recent case was that of Nathaniel Woods, an Alabama man executed on March 5 for being an accomplice to the shooting deaths of police officers. He and his roommate, Kerry Spencer, encountered three officers who came to break up a cocaine dealing ring fronted by Woods, Spencer and a third man who claimed to have avoided the location after it become difficult to keep police from conducting searches to bust the operation (he claims he paid protection money but the price had increased out of his range).
In testimony, Spencer admitted to being the sole shooter, but he remains on death row. Alabama law allows for accomplices to be executed, but it is unclear if any order of atonement is in place. So Woods went to his death first, having done nothing to cause the deaths of the officers (in that he performed no harmful act such as shooting them as Spencer did), and Spencer is still serving time.
My initial comments on this issue started quite a lengthy thread on Facebook, most because people began standing on soapboxes about the law rather than addressing the question I posed, which was why the accomplice was executed first.
We can’t seem to agree on what to do about people with no regard for human life, but we also seem to get many aspects of human reformation wrong. So what to do about accomplices versus those who actually commit acts against humanity?
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 