Emotional Debates

A passage from The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez, a 2020 documentary about an eight-year-old boy who was killed from abuse. The narrator spoke about American dichotomy. The most liberal state, California has the largest death row and America as a whole struggles with upholding American citizen’s unalienable right for life but also put the person to death.  It reminded me of the emotional debate Americans are experiencing. Vahe H  Apelian

“California has the largest death row in the U.S. There are 740 people on California’s death row, and Southern California is currently sentencing more people to death than any part of the country.

In essence, the U.S. is the only western democracy that still have death penalty. It continues to pose a significant moral dilemma for the country.

We are, in many respects, of two minds because this is the country of great opportunity, of respect for humanity and at the same time, it’s a country that is highly punitive. The better angels of our nature want to get rid of death penalty. They have not prevailed.

We are a country of mercy, and we are a country of vengeance, and we live with both at the same time. 

California has the system where it can’t just be a murder, it has to be a murder special circumstance. Gruesome cases are really hard to decide and you’re going to have jurors who believe that this person should not be killed. Jurors has a choice. They have choice between life without a possibility of parole and the death penalty. And when it gets down to a person who does not think that a defendant should die, and jurors who think we have to kill this person in order to protect the society, you have extraordinarily emotional debates.

In the penalty case, deciding to have the person killed or prisoned for life, the instructions given to the jurors were different. The standards were different. 

At the stage, it just came down to personal beliefs and personal preferences. "