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.”