State’s rights and the death penalty

We routinely accept that other countries may or may not impose the death penalty for someone convicted of murder. After all, they are a sovereign nation with different cultural views than those we hold in the United States. However, how is it that in America, one state might decree capital punishment for murder while a neighboring state has abolished the death penalty altogether? Unfortunately, the 10th amendment to the Constitution allows states to not only judge the severity of the crime but whether the perpetrator is worthy of forfeiting his life as punishment.

Citizen decision

The notion of “State’s Rights”, a central tenet of the failed Articles of Confederation, was officially enshrined by the 10th amendment to the Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Consequently, we have 50 little states all acting like sovereign nations when it comes to employing capital punishment. This November California will vote on Proposition 34 which will eliminate the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Your worth a quarter and you are a dime

The federal government tells us that a dollar in one state must be equivalent to a dollar in another

state. The 15th Amendment to the Constitution tells states they can’t deny a citizen the right to vote based on the color of his skin. With the 19th Amendment we are told that a woman’s vote is equivalent to a man’s and must be honored. Yet, when it comes to the issue of whether a human life is a worthy judicial remedy for the cost of murder, there is no guidance to the states.

Which state is right?

Three states, New Jersey, New Mexico and Illinois, have actively repealed their system of capital punishment. Another 12 states don’t have the proper legislation or are attempting to get out of the death penalty business altogether. How can a murder be worthy of capital punishment in one state but the same exact murder in another state the proper punishment is life in prison without parole? Some one is wrong.

Suitable punishment between states

Capital punishment is being unequally applied through out the U.S. There can’t be this many different shades of gray when it comes to capital punishment. You are either guilty of a specific type of murder (premeditated, committed in the act of a crime, etc.) and subject to capital punishment or you’re not.  A state should not be able to fudge on the enforcement. For a state to side step the application capital punishment invalidates the entire underpinning of the death penalty as suitable punishment.

Civil rights based on marketing

The quality of one’s life is not altered by the state in which the person resides. Neither the victim nor the perpetrator is any less of a human being by living in one state over another. Similarly, it is philosophically unsound to have one state allowing gay marriage and another state to ban it. Civil rights need to be applied uniformly across all states. If we accept that capital punishment is a law of nature, possibly ordained by God, not to exercise the order of the universe may be an equivalent crime. How can the jurisdiction find a person guilty of theft but never order restitution to the victim or a prison sentence?

The State’s of God

The Constitution of the United States, along with the 10th Amendment, has failed to give states the proper guidance in the matter of life and death. It is not a “State’s Right” issue to determine when and where capital punishment should be enforced. We either have a universally accepted value of a human life and justice in America or we have chaos befitting a country run by 50 different militias. The sooner we acknowledge the 10th Amendment did not grant the states to act like Gods, the sooner we will have a uniform application of capital punishment in America.