frightening

As a change to our regular Saturday night viewing, we watched "Life And Death Row" on BBC3. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01tbfbg

It followed the lead-up to the execution of two convicted murderers in Texas - interviewing both their victims' families and own families.

This kind of television is a sobering lesson into the extremes of the human condition. The convicts were articulate, resigned to their fate but not necessarily remorseful for their actions. The outcome of the programme was that one guy was executed and the other was given a stay of execution pending a review of his trial.

I found the show utterly absorbing, yet frightening to watch.

I am against the death penalty. I believe taking the life of a convicted murderer makes the State (us who vote them in!) as bad as them. It's not an eye for an eye. That's simplistic bullshit. That's good ol'-fashioned Southern states crypto-bollocks, that only a backward judicial system in Texas can be.

Look at Moors Murderer, Ian Brady. He's been trying to do himself in for years now. I think he can't take it anymore because he's realised the horror of his actions. He lives with himself and his horrendous crimes each and every day. If he had been executed, we wouldn't have had the knowledge that this person is rightly suffering from an attack of conscience. It was the correct decision to keep him alive, and to continue to keep him and his ilk alive. Make him think of the consequences of his savagery.

Our understanding of death - beyond this world - is unknown, though there are plenty of suggestions of what may lie ahead. Maybe Brady will suffer an eternity of hell when he finally dies? Or death may just be a blackless void of nothingness? Who knows, but I guess one day we'll all find out.