What's worse - Extremism or Justice?

It was a typical day, business as usual at work. The usual bug ridden software we work with, taking head-on the fast approaching go-live dates and one long hard look at what's the worst that can happen as a result of this dangerous concoction will surely send chills up anyone's spine. The party line however is "we're having fun"! So much fun that I get tired and am ready for a break. Yes, that's exactly what I did. Took a break, for lunch. I like to have my lunch with friends or colleagues, so I don't still think about stuff that makes me nervous.

Had our lunch with a few laughs and some rare insights from our "Indian Jew" (I call him that because this mallu can show you the best deal regardless of what you are set out to buy) into how to buy the cheapest possible SDHC card, 4gb for 5 bucks. Can you beat that? Well now you understand the nick name. Anyway, on my way back to desk I was distracted by the laptop speaker volume of a colleague and discovered that the terrorists hijacked some Hotels in Mumbai and some incidents happened at the train station and a hospital. We started reading about what happened and then realized the scale of the damage and the message that is being sent. No anonymity anymore, no secrecy... everything out in the open.

"Animals! Savages!!, god forbid them... what do they get taking innocent lives", we were all saying to ourselves and each other. There is a lot of anger in these terrorists, anger from hatred, anger from oppression, a very important emotion heavily misguided toward bad things. 2 days passed, indian forces have taken control of the situation. Damage has been done. A Country's pride is hurt, time and again, but never as bas as this time.

But it makes one wonder, what does it take to sacrifice his\her own life for a cause. How much of commitment it needs, but what's worse is, what does it take to murder 200 people indiscriminately, men women and children alike. Good thing they don't have to go to bed with that anymore, or I bet that would be hell.

Days passed and I am still recovering from the shock, digesting the facts and the after math. On my way to work, hearing NPR (b.t.w. it's National Public Radio, for the FM challenged out there) tuning in for more information on Mumbai attacks. There was an article being broadcasted on a slightly different subject. That is the process of death penalty and how another death sentence is coming up shortly for actioning in the state of Washington, walla walla state prison.

In washington state, if a person is sentenced to death - that person has two options to choose how he/she wants to die. Hang until death, or Lethal injection. This person apparently chose a Lethal injection. The radio announcer went on to describe how that works. There are 3 drug injections that will be administered. First one is a barbiturate, puts the inmate to sleep. It is an anaesthetic. Second, a paralyzing agent to paralyze all muscular functions including breathing. Third, the Toxic agent that interrupts electric signals essential to heart's functioning and therefore will lead to a cardiac arrest. Sounds fun so far? It turned my stomach as she was describing the steps.

They say, in some cases, when they analyzed blood of the inmate post-martum, they detect awareness levels well after administering the Paralyzing agent. What that means is that, the inmate can potentially feel what is being done to him, but cannot breath or signal anybody what he is feeling and how he wants to be helped, not that anyone wants to listen to him, but he just couldn't communicate anything if he wanted to. Unlike the victims of the terrorism, who had a chance for a split second, for a blink of an eye, that infinitely long moment that lasts between the terrorist aiming his gun at the victim and the bullets taking the life of the victim - to protect themselves, take chances and try to survive. But think of the fate of the inmate being "put" to death. No chance in hell, they can escape the worst. The worst part is everyone present on the scene know it. There are no chances, no excuses, no change of hearts in the last minute. Inmate shall be put to death and that he will be.

Assuming I established my point of how gruesome this is, let me stepback a moment and think about this. A regular guy commits a crime, may be a really heinous one, one that should be punished severely. He is sentenced to death by the judiciary system. But I fail to understand WHAT THE HELL GIVES US THE RIGHT to take a man's life. A society full of people get together and shamelessly admit it is ok to take a person's life because of what he did - and suddenly that is RIGHT, ETHICAL and JUSTICE. So really what we saying here is that killing is called a "murder" if the majority doesn't agree with the reasons, but the same act will be called "justice" if people can be convinced to lean the other way. Am I the only one getting the feeling that something of the size of pacific is seriously amiss here. It doesn't add up. This subject of Right and Wrong just doesn't settle in my mind - ever! I could never make peace with any explanation ever given for defining Right from Wrong.

How can we live in a society, wearing a smile and thinking everything is fine when the rest of them can decide whether you should live or not and that would be considered perfectly legal.

There are several people involved in carrying out a death sentence. One takes him into the room, One straps the hands, the other straps the legs down. There will be different people for administering the injections. The point being, the process is shared between many people, so that no one person feel guilty for killing a person on their own, even though they are just doing their job. I wonder why feel guilty if theybelieve in the system and believe in the judgement. The fact that the process is created this way, speaks a little bit about how much the lawmakers themselves believe in the "ethical correctness" of the concept of death sentence.

I mean most butchers will not feel bad about their jobs because they are taking life of animals everyday. So why feel bad if it is your job to execute criminals, unless there is a part of you that says this is not correct.

We boast a lot of knowledge of human psychology and give weird names to various mental conditions people have. Every criminal would probably be suffering with some mental disease and instead of trying to cure the disease, how is it fair to take a person's life?

I could never comprehend this. Can you?

-Sridhar