Lessons in Death Penalty

By Patricia Nattabi, Law Student, Makerere University 
 

When I was young, the thought of someone dying was a very repulsive thing for me. It was a thing of nightmares, where something dark and evil took away from me those people that I loved and made the people I loved sad. It was the cruel invasion of my happiness and I could never understand why these people had to just leave. For awhile the need to blame someone ignited this irrational fear in me for going to sleep in the dark because dead people in coffins never open their eyes again and they cannot get up anymore. They would disappear into the ground, alone in the dark. Death was alien to me for a very long time; faraway, difficult to understand and somehow even the grownups could not make it go away. An older me now understands that death is as part of being human as life is. Because you were born, you have to die sometime and you might not know when or how. Death is never a good thing and as much as we may want it to be there is never justice in death. 

 The irony of death and growing up is that there are those who are absolutely lucky to have that protective shroud of childish ignorance that people die for a small category of reasons. But for those millions of children with their parents on death row around the world, they have that extra unfortunate gruesome reason, death row. Our parents scare bad habits out of us when we are young in their own numerous, creative ways. For those children, the law lets the state teach them those fundamental reasons by killing their parents. Its nothing I could have ever dreamed would happen when I was young. I always thought that if there was none else out there to protect me, there was always the law in whatever form.   

The law was never the bad guy and just as it should never be. The law should protect and in the eyes of children who witness these realities of death row, the law becomes the enemy by isolating them psychologically and physically from a society that does not understand that they too have suffered a loss. On the other hand, it paints a new reality for children making them believe that death is the only option for people who in most cases have made a terrible misjudgment. This should never be the lesson we teach our children. Instead, by giving prisoners the chance to redeem themselves and reevaluate their decisions in jail before releasing them into society, teaches them lessons that will lead to a future with no death penalty; lessons that speak of the dignity and integrity of each human being instead of creating bitter and angry adults with a vengeance complex. 

The urge to hurt when one has been hurt is natural. Fear of the unknown centralizes our priorities as adults and most times it will strip us of rational thinking and incite our basic animal instinct to protect ourselves i.e do away with anything that’s a threat.  Animalistic instincts usually pioneer a lot of blood loss and not too many beating hearts left in the ring.  But history shows us, irrational yet the more intelligent being, having the potential to move past that hurt, rationalize and look at each other as human beings not as something dispensable. Emphasizing ones human dignity as inherent and universal also means reigning in one’s own blood-lust instincts and holding onto the need to set yourself aside from the criminal. Be the better person who will teach the children of our next generation the true essence of human dignity. Killing the person who has done something wrong creates a domino effect; the tipping chip will eventually land on you. Giving criminals the benefit of the doubt does not weaken us but empowers us. It gives us the tools to learn to heal and repair the damage. Be gratified that you were human enough to save another person, not animal enough to have wished death on someone else’s loved one. Say no to death penalty.