Legal Murder

Having just finished Engel's book, Lord High Executioner, I can honestly say that my former opinion about legal execution, holds true. It behooves me to think that there is justice in juries, judges and the general public believing that killing another human being is, in any way, morally right and just. There is no form of execution that is not painful. If you think so, do some close research. Not even lethal injection is necessarily painless because, as all inflicted medications, sometimes the method experiences unique errors. There is something deeply disgusting about one human life killing the life of another, even with legal reason. In fact, to me, that makes it all the more horrific considering that those doing it, have the excuse of the law behind them, to set up a cold,
 planned death with witnesses and locations and methods that include the participation in some way, of  the individual who is to die under the jurisdiction they deem to carry out. History as told in Engel's book, gives ample background of the interest, salacious or not, in executions as a method of punishment for crime. Ancient ways of putting criminals to death were grim spectacles with attendant picnic baskets, revelries and general celebration. Some of the so-called crimes were the theft of something as insignificant as theft by a poor, starving child of a piece of bread! Even today, legislation, cold-bloodedly insists upon witnesses, medical participation and media coverage of executions. Galleries of press, relatives and invited persons are and or were, set up in institutions to add proof in visual satisfaction, that the event is or was duly carried out. To believe that, as in some opinions, misled as they are, incarceration is more expensive is incorrect. Execution can cost upward of over a million and a half dollars, considering all of the formal documentation and legal requirements. It costs much less to keep an offender in jail for the rest of its life. Fortunately, in enlightened countries, executions have ended and to me, that indicates their level of intelligent human decency and compassion over that of vengeance in the name of the law. In the first place, obviously and evidently, most legal punishments other than fining, are not deterrents. To think so, is simply and logically, ridiculous and wrong. Incarceration is the worst kind of punishment. The latter removes the one element that makes us truly human. That element is freedom. It is the freedom to chose how, where, when and with whom we associate and operate. If that freedom is taken away, all that is open to us as people on earth, has disappeared and we are lost. In prison, from what I read of those residing there, choice is eliminated almost fully, from the prisoner's life. That must be the ultimate punishment and thus, naturally, the best deterrent.