Dead Teen Walking

The reoccurring theme of Nature vs. Nurture helps man try to decipher and understand actions. Nurture affects how man is molded. For example, White Fang in the novel White Fang became only as vicious as he needed to survive. Society, and his surroundings, hardened him. Like the young black boys in the article "Dead Teen Walking," White Fang learned to fight in order to ensure his own survival. Those boys grew up in some of the toughest conditions imaginable. Being young boys, they looked up to older men who were not good examples. After figuring out how important it was to have others backing one up, they joined gangs and often found themselves in quite a bit of trouble. I was disgusted by what Republican Governor Pete Wilson of California's spokesman said in the article about 14 year old boys being able to be on death row. He claims the gangs use young boys as the "triggermen" because gangs know younger boys won't get the death penalty. He says "We need, as a society, to see if there is some action that can be taken. And, by God, the death penalty is a deterrent." So, if I am correct, this man thinks we should all think killing a 14 year old boy is OK? Is rehabilitation not an option? It seems to me that society isn't willing to fix a problem it created. If Nature vs. Nurture is, in fact, true, we should be trying to fix the root of the problem: how these boys are raised and how society around them acts.
I am totally, one-hundred percent against the death penalty. I don't care what age the offender is, what he did, or what he says. Killing is wrong, plain and simple. There is a quote out there that says "Why do we kill people, who kill people, to tell them killing is wrong?" I find our country to be rather hypocritical (ex. other countries are not allowed weapons of mass distruction, but we can have them set up and ready to fire). In our class discussion we learned that about 70 innocent people died on death row in the last 5 years or so. That is simply not acceptable. It sickens me how easily this is comparable to Abu Ghraib. We tortured (and most likely killed, even if the government won't admit it) hundreds of Iraqis in search of some far-fetch information only some would have. America figured, "Hey, what the heck, so we tortured some innocent men, but we did get really important information for our country." That is an attempt to rationalize what happened, and not many buy it. How is that any different to death row? OK, so we kill some innocent guys, but we also kill some really, really bad ones...so it's fine. It wasn't OK in the case of Abu Ghraib, and it isn't OK in the case of death row.