The Confession

The latest in the series of books from John Grisham, one in which he goes back to what he does best : Create scenarios based on the US justice system that gets you wondering “Just hold on a sec, is that really possible ? What if it really happens like this ? “

The theme of the book is around an innocent man who is executed by the state of Texas, and the mayhem that breaks loose once the real killer admits his crime. It triggered a lot of thoughts about the death penalty, which sadly is also a practice allowed by the Indian judicial system and laws.

I thought a bit about the rights and wrongs of the death penalty, here are some of my thoughts

I do not believe we can pass a judgement on whether a fellow human being should live or die. Nor do I believe that any civilized form of governments should have the blood of its own citizens on its hands.

I am aware that once a person breaks the laws established by society, he has to pay the price for that. The price however cannot be his life. Keep him in prison for his entire life if you want, but let us not pass a judgement to kill.

And surely the issue of sustaining the cost of the prisoner for his life should not be too much. After all, at least in India, the death penalty is supposedly reserved for the rarest of the rare cases. I saw that currently we have around 300 prisoners on death row. We are a country of over a billion, we should be able to take care of 300 more without breaking our budgets too much.