While many in this community hold their breath during Troy Davis' 11th hour bid for life, the local news here in Georgia ran a local new story in which the murdered police officer's mother, Anneliese McPhail, said that 'We just want some peace."
In the context of the story, it was difficult to tell whether she was complaining about the fact that she was being bothered by reporters (The lead-in to the story stated that Ms. McPhail had not traveled to Jackson for the execution, but was staying in Columbus), or whether she was making a statement that the execution itself would bring her peace. While I definitely understand the former, and my heart aches for this mother who lost her son to violence, the latter proposition made me sad.
In reading more, I found a longer quote that clarified her feelings:
""This delay again is very upsetting and I think really unfair to us, because we want this situation closed," the slain officer's mother, Anneliese MacPhail, told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." She said the execution would bring her "relief and maybe some peace."
There are many reasons to oppose the death penalty: the possibility of our fallible justice system imposing an irrevocable sentence on an innocent man, a belief in the sanctity of human life, even the lives of criminals. But one of the most powerful arguments against the death penalty is sometimes ignored by the anti-death community--the incredible damage that the death penalty inflicts on the families who's wounds are supposed to be healed by the blood of another.
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