Books and Politics (do with this what you will)

So this is partially a book review and partially a political rant.

I know I already did the death penalty post, so I'll try not to go overboard, but it plays a big role in this book so of course I've got to yet again share my beliefs.

So the book that I just finished is called Change of Heart and it's by one of my favorite authors Jodi Picoult. The plotline of the book is that main character Shay Bourne has been convicted of murder and is on death row. While in prison, he finds out that the daughter of the man that he killed is having heart failure and will likely die, and he decides that he wants to donate his heart to her. This poses a problem because lethal injection is designed to stop the heart, so heart transplant would not be an option.
So Shay gets an attorney who makes it her job to fight for his cause, and also a spiritual adviser, because they choose to use a religious defense to argue his case.

There are some heavy religious elements to this story. I'll try not to spoil them because I want everyone to go out and read this. Basically, random miracles start occurring within the prison and the prisoners accredit them to Shay. Picoult draws a lot of parallels from Shay to Jesus, and also manages to critique Christianity with her theme of the gnostic gospels.

You would think that being a Christian, I would be highly offended by this idea, but I'm not at all. Who's to say what kind of person Jesus would or wouldn't be? I like to think that God doesn't stereotype. Also, many Christians are against believing in the gnostic gospels, but if you know the story behind them then I'm not sure how you would. Basically they are gospels that were excluded from the Bible, and well you can read the book to learn the rest.

The book is great. However what offends me is that the case is so reliant on religion, and I am a firm believer in the fact that religion does not belong in the courtroom. I found it a bit ridiculous that not once did Shay's attorney in court mention the fact that he would be saving a girl's life! No, she just used the religious argument to apply to state law. I understand that the law needed to be included, but with my experience in court I can be sure as hell that the attorney would focus on the fact that a little girl would be dying otherwise.

I especially love that in the beginning, Jodi brings up an important flaw in the criminal justice system: jury selection. This has been the focus of so many papers that I have written and I promise I wont rant, but the system is messed up. Its not 'justice' to let 12 people with no legal background have the final say in legal matters. The law is about what the law says, not what society thinks, and personally I don't support the current jury system. That being said, Jodi seemed to agree when writing from the stance of one of the jurors. He said that, "Coming into court felt like being a tourist in a foreign country who is expected to speak the language." That's the thing, jurors don't know the law, yet they have to make decisions based on this world that they aren't a part of. He says "it's a strange thing, putting justice into the hands of twelve strangers." AMEN.

Finally, let me just do a quick death penalty summary. In a previous post I explained why I disagree with it. Another reason was brought up in this story. No matter how many people say that lethal injection is quick and painless, they're wrong.

First of all, in case you don't watch the news, a couple weeks ago there was a disaster in which a death row inmate was supposed to be executed by lethal injection, and it was injected wrong or something and the death lasted for 40 minutes and the inmate eventually died not of lethal injection but of heart attack. It was gross.

But the criminal justice system says that this is a very rare exception because lethal injection is simple. SAYS WHO? The only reason that they can say this with confidence is because no one has ever come back to tell them otherwise.
I know some will argue that death penalty should hurt because the person deserves it. Well I don't like you so shut up.
Our legal system guards against cruel and unusual punishment, so for those of you who think lethal injection applies to that, here's a piece from Change of Heart.

"Lethal injection was supposed to be like putting a dog to sleep- a drowsiness came over you and you just never woke up. It was a cocktail of three drugs: sodium pentathol- a sedative, pavulon- a muscle paralyzer, and potassium chloride which stops the heart. Sodium pentathol is ultra short acting which means that you could recover quickly from its effects, so the subject may have feeling in the nerves but be sedated enough to be unable to communicate or move. The British medical journal 'Lancet' published a 2005 study of the toxicology reports of 49 inmates executed inmates in four US states; 43 had levels of anesthesia lower than required for surgery, and 21 had levels that would indicate awareness. Anesthesiologists says that if a person were conscious at the time potassium chloride was administered, it would feel like boiling oil in the veins. An inmate might feel as if he were being burned alive from the inside, but be unable to move or speak because of the muscle paralysis and sedation."
(I have a slight conspiracy that the government intends for it to be like this, but I would hate to think that this happens to people who were wrongly convicted.)

So there you go.