CLEVELAND, Ohio – The death penalty is the kind of issue that dares you to see it in black and white. But spend enough time sitting with it — examining how it works in practice, what it costs, what it risks — and the gray begins to overwhelm.
As a reporter, I sat in a courtroom while a man -– a monster, really — who murdered 11 women, sat stone-faced, without a flicker of regret or sign of humanity, as if the lives he stole were beneath acknowledgment. I also once covered an execution and watched a mother witness the death of her daughter’s killer, those many years of waiting for justice and closure coming to rest on a murderer’s final breaths.
Having seen that unthinkable grief up close, I understand why the death penalty exists. The rage, the devastation, the need for some kind of reckoning — they’re real, and they help explain why this punishment still appeals to the public. It rides on the rawest emotions we have and channels them into something that feels like action…