I suppose a welcome is in order, for myself and anyone else reading. I've been intending to start a blog for a long time, but I always felt that they were extremely self involved! But then again, who isn't? So, I've decided to start a blog that focuses less on myself and more on an issue I am quite passionate about, capital punishment.
Maybe a little bit of background about myself and how I came to be involved with this issue. I am a 5th year Law student at Melbourne University. The first time I ever really interacted with the efficacy of the death penalty as a form of punishment was in the 2nd year of my degree. During a class on Criminal Law we had a visit from Richard Bourke, one of the senior fellows for Reprieve Australia.
I suppose at this point I should tell you a little something about Reprieve. They are a pro bono organisation that bring lawyers together from all over the world to fight capital punishment in America. They operate by adopting and conducting the appeals of convicted criminals on death row. These men and women may well be guilty of their crimes, but more often than not are incapable of finding proper representation to fight their sentence through the appropriate appellate courts. Reprieve appeals the cases vigilantly with the ultimate goal being, to lessen the sentence of the condemned. Beyond working within the system, Reprieve is involved in many international extra-legal movements to push for the abolition of capital punishment. Enough about Reprieve and back to my story.
We watched a movie which followed the final month of an African-American man on death row. The appeals, the plea for mercy, the desperation and finally the execution. For some, the saddest point of the movie was the posthumous exoneration which came all too late. For me, however, this seemed to merely compound the injustice of the execution in the first place. Simply watching this movie or listening to Richard Bourke speaking on the topic was not what really forced me to engage with the issue. It was the guy in the back row, just behind me, who raised his hand and asked "But what if they are guilty?"
My reaction to his comment was the impetus that forced me from my inertia on the issue. Being confronted by someone who seemed so blind to the real issues behind what makes capital punishment such a devastating form of justice made me take on an equally absolute, albeit the polar opposite, opinion. I suppose it's just like Newton's laws on motion.
I know this seems like quite a weak and reactionary approach. My Dad always told me as a kid, "Act, don't react." At the time I did react, I formed an opinion on the issue solely because I felt the need to even the imbalance created by his blind and absolute support for the death penalty. That was three years ago. I decided a few years after that moment that it was time to act on my opinions to prove to myself that I could be more than an idle reactionary. Since then my opinions have developed significantly, and I hope they will continue to do so.
So, there you have a brief prelude to what brought me to engage with this topic, but by no means what has brought me to create this blog. I'm sure I'll find the time to write about my involvements up until this point.
I guess I should outline my aims and goals for this blog as well. My beliefs on the issue are quite simple, but at the same time it's an incredibly complicated topic. I believe that capital punishment is absolutely wrong. I know it's dangerous to ever talk in absolutes, and in some ways this often detracts from the point you are trying to make, that's why I aim to be as unbiased and as rational in my posts on this blog as possible. But, like everyone else, I have a strong opinion on the issue which I won't go into details on now. I don't want my posts to be long lectures on what I believe, far from it. My aim is for this blog to not only canvass the many issues that surround the death penalty as a form of punishment, but also to develop my own opinions on the issues and to have a place where I can record this development. I want the way I present the issues to be as clear, concise and approachable as possible. I want to encourage and facilitate thought and constructive discussions on the issue, if it should come to that. My posts will be not only about certain issues concerning capital punishment, but also about any international developments and whatever I may be involved in at any given time, past/present/future.
In the future I would like to get this blog onto it's own domain and open some forums to further facilitate an open discussion, but that is a long way off.
There you have it, a mission statement!
Wish me luck.
Quote of the day:
"It's easy to know what you're against, quite another thing to know what you're for."
- The Wind That Shakes The Barley
No comments:
Post a Comment