When I was work­ing at Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al USA, I came across a very thought-pro­vok­ing pic­ture that so­lid­i­fied my opin­ion against the death penal­ty for­ev­er. While grow­ing up Trinidad, I was prac­ti­cal­ly drilled in the moral and le­gal im­per­a­tive of killing a pris­on­er as pun­ish­ment. But my young mind just couldn't meld the moral with the eth­i­cal rea­sons for legal­ly mur­der­ing a hu­man be­ing as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for pun­ish­ment for mur­der­ing a hu­man be­ing.

In any case, on this par­tic­u­lar day at Amnesty, I came face to face with a poster call­ing for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and that poster had a pic­ture of the cru­ci­fied Christ, which filled the fore­ground en­tire­ly, and be­low it the ques­tion: What do you think He would say about the death penal­ty?

I sure hope all those re­li­gious lead­ers and cit­i­zens who con­sid­er them­selves holi­er than thou read this let­ter, and re­al­ly re­flect on why they would sanc­tion a prac­tice that al­so mur­dered their re­li­gious icon.

Mar­sha Ram­sa­roop

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