Af­ter the US Supreme Court al­lowed ex­e­cu­tions amid the pan­demic dur­ing which hun­dreds are in­fect­ing and wait­ing to die in US pris­ons, end­ing a nearly two-decade mora­to­rium, over­rid­ing pre­cau­tions of the med­ical fra­ter­nity and pleas of vic­tim fam­i­lies to the con­trary, three US cit­i­zens were ex­e­cuted within 4 days in July, while the coun­try was bat­tling COVID-19 and con­cerned cit­i­zens were en­gaged in the #Black­Lives­Mat­ter move­ment. Later in Au­gust, two more ex­e­cu­tions are sched­uled. WSN op­poses the death penalty for all crimes at all times un­der all cir­cum­stances.

AS THE UNITED STATES FACES FLAK WITHIN THE COUN­TRY AND  BE­YOND on grounds of equal­ity and ac­count­abil­ity, over the years Amer­i­cans, in gen­eral, have ac­cepted that the death penalty serves no pur­pose. Yet, the re­cent ex­e­cu­tions will be more than what was done in the last 100 years.

Catholic anti-death penalty ac­tivist and au­thor of in­ter­na­tional best-seller Dead Man Walk­ing, which was ren­dered into an Os­car-win­ning movie -Sis­ter He­len Pre­jean has cas­ti­gated the US ju­di­cial sys­tem and de­rided it for its in­sen­si­tiv­ity.
Sis­ter He­len points out the ar­bi­trari­ness of a sys­tem, that de­pends on the will of in­di­vid­ual pros­e­cu­tors, is un­der­scored also by other kinds of in­jus­tice and cul­tural lega­cies.

Point­ing out to the ar­bi­trari­ness in the Amer­i­can ju­di­cial sys­tem, the cel­e­brated au­thor of many books against cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment says that it is dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile that the south­ern states of the US, seeped in a his­tory of slav­ery and racism ac­count for three-fourths of the ex­e­cu­tions.

The United Na­tions has said that “the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s de­ci­sion to re­in­state the death penalty at the fed­eral level goes against the do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tional trend to abol­ish or halt ex­e­cu­tions.”

No­body cares to pon­der that once cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is car­ried out, the cause of jus­tice may look fin­ished, but the cause of re­for­ma­tion is lost for­ever and is against the law of na­ture. The au­thor of The Death of In­no­cents and River of Fire -Sis­ter He­len says, “ The ar­ro­gance of the death penalty is that God has fin­ished with you and we have de­cided that you must die.”

In In­dia, the dread­ful quar­tet in the Nirb­haya case was hanged in March and the sat­is­fy­ing the re­venge­ful yearn­ings of her mother and many oth­ers. Un­doubt­edly, they did a heinous crime. Yet, we have to ask, “Have such crimes ended with that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment? Has the gov­ern­ment done any­thing sub­stan­tial to avoid such crimes? Has the Nirb­haya Fund for pro­tec­tion of girls and women been utilised the way it should?

The World Sikh News con­demns and op­poses the new trend in the United States to re­in­state cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and joins voices world­wide against this “ir­re­versible act of man against God.”