I generally do not use this blog to post responses to high profile news cases but I was just SO struck by the headline regarding a possibility in the Trayvon Martin case. This is a case where a black male teenager in Florida was walking home with candy and an iced tea, yet had no weapon on him but he ended up shot to death by another Florida citizen.
The part that makes me so frustrated, while the whole situation is terrible and sad, is that if Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon, is convicted of a hate crime, he could be sentenced to death. This demonstrates exactly how our society fails to rehabilitate people who are suffering from any number of psychological issues. Killing Zimmerman sends a message to impressionable people in our nation, children and others, that "An eye for an eye" is an acceptable method of handling the suffering of human beings. The death sentence is archaic. We need, as a society, to come up with better solutions. Essentially, "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." Trayvon should never have been killed, obviously. But now that he is gone, there is no need to perpetuate murder. State sanctioned murder is one of the sickest kinds there is. Let us awaken to the reality that compassionate solutions can lead us to the kind of society that the vast majority of us dream about.
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