Yesterday morning in a correctional facility in Lucasville, a man convicted of murdering a family of five was put to death by lethal injection.
Jeffery Lundgren, a former cult leader, was sentenced to death for murdering five followers for what he called a lack of faith.
The man's actions were horrific and psychotic ' one of the members of the Avery family was a 7-year-old ' and he deserves every punishment Ohio can offer.
But, as usually happens when executions occur, it is time to reconsider what the maximum punishment in Ohio should be.
The United States Supreme Court declared the state's death penalty laws unconstitutional in 1972 and 1978, with the present configuration finally worked out in 1981. It stemmed from the Furman v. Georgia case, which found many states' laws violated the 8th and 14th amendments.
Besides the rising cost of lethal injections and the hassle of the numerous appeals before anyone can be executed, cases across the nation have been overturned in recent years ' including those with defendants on death row ' because of new DNA evidence. The rash of reversals sparked a new attack on the death penalty, validated by well-documented and blatant errors by the justice system.
Ohio is no different, and it's obvious fallibility means it should not have the ability to put defendants to death. When it comes to ending a life, governments should always err on the side of caution.
Sociologists have also discovered that the death penalty does little to deter future crimes from taking place, which was the point of extreme forms of punishment in the past.
Lundgren was a disturbed man who committed a heinous act. It's difficult to justify opposing his punishment. But for every man like him, there could be (and probably is) someone waiting to die for a crime he or she did not commit; an innocent person waiting to be killed by our government that will then commit the very crime they've been trying so ardently to stop.
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Fallible evidence, ineffective deterrence should point to elimination of death penalty
