Ronald Carlson want­ed vengeance when his sis­ter was mur­dered in 1983 in Texas. But when he wit­nessed the exe­cu­tion in 1998 of the per­son who com­mit­ted the mur­der he changed his mind. In a recent op-ed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Carlson said he had no opin­ion on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment before his sister’s death and remem­bers feel­ing hatred and ​“would have killed those respon­si­ble with my own hands if giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty.” But he lat­er dis­cov­ered that, ​“Watching the exe­cu­tion left me with hor­ror and empti­ness, con­firm­ing what I had already come to real­ize: Capital pun­ish­ment only con­tin­ues the vio­lence that has a pow­er­ful, cor­ro­sive effect on society.” 

Carlson said he sym­pa­thizes with oth­er vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, under­stand­ing how they would want to see those who killed their love ones suf­fer the same fate. But, he said, “[O]ur jus­tice sys­tem should not be dic­tat­ed by vengeance.” He asked, ​“As a soci­ety, shouldn’t we be more civ­i­lized than the mur­der­ers we con­demn?” Carlson has spent over half of his life exam­in­ing this issue and has come to believe, ​“We as a soci­ety should not be involved in the prac­tice of killing peo­ple.”
(R. Carlson, ​“Time to end the death penalty’s cycle of vio­lence,” Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, August 3, 2008). See also New Voices and Victims.

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