Some good news for a change.

[nwhiker]

Washington state's supreme court strikes down death penalty


I wasn't expecting to cry when I saw the news, but I did. Heck, I'm crying as I'm writing this. Even if I thought the death penalty was a deterrent, which is is more definitely not, the racism in its application would be cause enough to be against it. Aside, of course, from the total horror of the state coldly killing human beings.

I saw a tweet (alas, can't embed tweets here, wah!)from Emmanuel Macron the other day about how, 37 years ago, President Mitterand and Robert Badinter worked to and eliminated the death penalty in France. I remember that news, and I remember knowing that it was the right decision. I feel much the same way as my teenaged self today, with an additional layer of relief because of how tied the death penalty is to racism.

Good news from my state, I think.

Comments

[camelsamba]

Yay Washington!

A good thing about Michigan: "Michigan's death penalty history is unusual, as Michigan was the first English-speaking government in the world to abolish the death penalty for ordinary crimes. The Michigan State Legislature voted to do so on May 18, 1846, which has remained in law ever since." (was allowed for treason before that, but never applied.) And it became banned in the revised state constitution in 1964. (There was a federal execution at a federal prison in 1936.)