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Argument: Capital punishment does not bring "closure" to families
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Supporting quotations
Larry Fitzgerald, Spokeswoman for Texas Department of Criminal Justice. - With an execution, everyone is a victim. I never believed any of that crap about closure.[1]
Richard Brown, District Attorney, New York. - I think what bothers me most is that it offers to the families of the victims and the survivors a false sense of closure. They never get closure and they will not get closure until the time he [referring to Taylor] is executed or the court decides he will not be executed.[2]
Paul Bosco, whose brother was murdered (son of Antoinette Bosco). - One of the great counterarguments death penalty opponents face is the challenge, 'If it were your spouse/child/sibling who was murdered, you'd feel differently.' Never did I feel that that boy's shocked parents, who were losing their son as surely as my parents lost theirs, and who have the added pain of shame, needed to suffer more. An 18-year-old's execution would not give back the dead. Nor would it have given me 'closure', which I regard as a myth - a politician's fiction. Spare me, please, your feel-good vengeance.[3]
