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Thread-Topic: Abolish the death penalty
From: <governor.haley@sc.lmhostediq.com>
To: <governor.haley@sc.lmhostediq.com>
Subject: Abolish the death penalty
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2014 07:27:36 -0400
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<APP>CUSTOM
<PREFIX>Ms.</PREFIX>
<FIRST>Helena</FIRST>
<MIDDLE></MIDDLE>
<LAST>-</LAST>
<SUFFIX></SUFFIX>
<TITLE></TITLE>
<ORGANIZATION></ORGANIZATION>
<ADDR1>-</ADDR1>
<ADDR2></ADDR2>
<CITY>Country: Sweden</CITY>
<STATE>SC</STATE>
<ZIP>00000</ZIP>
<EMAIL>europeanhelena@gmail.com</EMAIL>
<PHONE_H></PHONE_H>
<PHONE_B></PHONE_B>
<ISSUE>ETHI</ISSUE>
<SUBJECT>Abolish the death penalty</SUBJECT>
<MSG>
Dear Governor Haley, 

My name is Helena and I am from Sweden. I am writing to you because South Carolina has the death penalty and because I am hoping that you will abolish it.

There are countries in the world that still use the death penalty. Saudi Arabia, China and North Korea being some of them. What these countries have in common is that they are some of worst, most oppressive, dictatorial regimes in the world. These governments have taken the right to rob their citizens of free speech, of free press, of basic human rights. They even have the legal right to kill their own citizens. I understand perfectly the role the death penalty plays in these dictatorial regimes, where the states have total control of its citizens, even their right to live. What I do not understand, is what role the death penalty plays in one of the largest democracies in the world, a country that takes pride in their freedom? How can such a country, or at least, some of the states in that country, take on such a dictatorial practise as to give itself the right to kill its citizens? 

I happened to be on vacation in the United States once when a high-profile execution took place. The convict had committed a despicable act and deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison, there's no question about that. But an execution? The feeling of merely being on U.S. soil when I knew that at the same very moment that I was walking around as a tourist, a man was being executed, a man was being killed, not by some random maniac, not spontaneously by a jealous spouse. But by the state, by the government, by the ruling elite. It was a deeply troubling feeling. It felt like I had been transported into the depths of a dictatorial regime, like I would have to look over my shoulder, like someone would come around the corner and question my right to speak, to move. Living in Europe, it's not only my homeland that doesn't have the death penalty, it's the entire continent, therefore I've never given the death penalty much thought. Until that vacation in the States.

To actually have violence and death in a democratic system, as a means for justice, as a legal right of the state, seems bizarre to me. A democratic system surely should value peace and freedom, and yet violence and death, a revengeful "eye for an eye", has been made a foundation of the very system. To me, as an outsider who has been fortunate enough to be born in a democratic abolutionist part of the world, it's incomprehensible. 

Please, Governor Haley, make South Carolina join the rest of the modern world and abolish the death penalty. 

Kindest regards,

Helena
</MSG>

</APP>