Changing my thinking

Published on 4/22/02 Daily Egyptian (SIUC)

My daughter has decided to become a vegetarian. There's no religious or health beliefs involved; she says she's challenging herself. She has a friend who is a vegetarian, and she's trying it on for size. Another little side trip on the road to self-discovery.

It's an adjustment in thinking for the rest of us, though. We're a household of omnivores with definite carnivorous leanings. I'm trying to accommodate, even encourage her in her effort. I've tried to come up with meals that can be "meat optional." Sometimes it's a matter of making up some extra vegetables, rice and potatoes. Sometimes it involves making a separate portion of the main course with the meat left out. A meatless diet is a big departure in thinking for me. I'm a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy.

Still, I'm finding chinks in my mental armor more and more these days. Never in my life did I imagine I would come out against capital punishment. I've always been a proponent of law and order, believing the harshest crimes deserved the harshest punishment.

I felt that the current method of execution was too humane. I was living in Washington when they hanged Westley Allan Dodd, a convicted child molester and killer. There was absolutely no doubt he was guilty. He confessed, and there was a plethora of physical evidence against him. If anyone ever deserved to hang, it was Dodd.

There was no doubt in Dodd's case, although there were in others.

Occasionally I heard of someone on death row who was subsequently freed, but they were an anomaly, and their innocence determined in time. I trusted the system to work well enough that only the deserving would be executed. Then Gov. Ryan declared a moratorium on executions.

Illinois had exonerated more death row inmates than it had executed. The system was obviously broke. It begs the question, have we already killed an innocent person?

In the Navy, I was part of my ship's self-defense force. I was issued a 12-gauge shotgun and 45-caliber pistol with the real possibility I would have to use them, possibly against someone I knew. While overseas, I patrolled my ship at night with my shotgun and 45. While overseas, a drunken sailor tried to climb the anchor chain to get aboard the ship after liberty had expired. Had he been successful, likely he would have been met by me or another member of the security force. Had he been successful, the results could have been disastrous.

The thought of executing an innocent person scares me. And the numbers suggest the system in not just broke, it's seriously broke. A commission impaneled to study the death penalty in Illinois released a report with 85 recommendations for fixing the system. Even with all the reforms in place, it said there would always be a possibility we could wrongly execute someone.

The reforms needed could cost the state millions of dollars at a time when the state has no money. Our budget is already bleeding red ink. Can we afford the reforms needed to make the system work? What would be the benefit? Study after study shows the death penalty has no deterrent effect. Those who kill their fellow man aren't exactly rational thinkers.

Executing someone is expensive in terms of dollars and cents. Studies have shown the price tag for an execution can run as much as $2 million more than life without parole for the same person. Multiply that against the nearly 160 inmates on Illinois death row.

Maybe a change in thinking is in order for all of us. Maybe it's time to look at capital punishment for what it is: a dangerously flawed process that gobbles up money and returns nothing. An exonerated inmate can be released from prison. A wrongly executed inmate will always be dead.