Death Penalty = Legal Murder?

On Wednesday MCC's Student Peace Action Network will host a panel discussion on the death penalty. The group presents programs on controversial issues. A recent program featured four former members of the U.S. military who spoke against the Iraq War, and they quickly became targets of venomous attacks by a disruptive protesters wearing "Support the Troops" shirts.

This week's program will be on Wednesday, April 8, at 7:00PM in the MCC Conference Center. The program, titled "Legal Murder: Exposing Flaws and Injustices in the Death Penalty", will include Gary Gauger, a resident of Richmond, Illinois, whose case is widely known and is the subject of his book, In Spite of the System, and Jeremy Schroeder, Executive Director of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

According to an article in the Northwest Herald, a representative of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights will explain why that group opposes the death penalty.

My own views began to shift in the early 1990s after I studied and worked with a retired osteopathic physician, Irene Hickman, D.O. (1915-2002). In my work with her I learned past -life regression hypnotherapy methods and was also introduced to spirit releasement work.

Irene held the position that many crimes are done by persons to whom one or more spirits are attached, and these spirits influence the actions of those persons. If you execute such a person for a heinous crime of which he has been convicted, then you are setting that spirit free of his body. And, once free, then that spirit may just look for another "host" and attach there, continuing the cycle of crimes.

I have conducted many regression hypnotherapy sessions and, in a fair number of them, have encountered spirits of one type or another and including evil, or dark, spirits. The techniques of spirit releasement therapy work. The spirit, when identified, can be prevented from escaping and can be converted, ending the cycle of its harm. As an interesting (to me) side note, the State of Indiana has regulated against spirit releasement therapy. West Virginia doesn't much care for it, either.

For this reason I now question the usefulness of the death penalty, even in cases of clear or admitted guilt.