Commentary, Opinion

An eye for an eye

October 8, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

“What in the hell happened?”

“An execution. A successful one.”

“How can you call that, a success?”

“Eduard Delacroix is dead.”

You may recognize that scene from the Tom Hanks movie The Green Mile, where the execution of a prisoner doesn’t go as planned.

However, as the answer indicates, it may not have been pretty, but the goal of killing the prisoner was successful.

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

Some people take that phrase literally, but obviously the literal translation is misleading. The phrase means the punishment should fit the crime.

While some forms of prison were used in ancient times, the modern concept of punishing criminals by segregating them from society to do penance is relatively new.

Before the 19th century, Western countries punished offenders in a variety of ways, including beating, whipping, forms of public humiliation, and in some cases, swinging at the end of a rope in the public square.

By the end of the 18th century in England and Wales, there were 220 offences punishable by hanging, including some crimes which, by today’s standards, are very minor.

It must have been a very nervous time for a lot of people.

Every modern Western European country has abolished capital punishment.

Canada had its last hanging in 1962 and abolished capital punishment in 1976.

In the Americas, the U.S. is the only country to have carried out an execution since 2008.

The story is very different in Asia and the Middle East, where a bullet to the back of the head or being hanged in public is very common.

Some people are against executing people, while others see it as a form of punishment and are all for it.

I’ve done a lot of research on people who are on death row in various U.S. states, with a focus on Texas, because that’s where they really like to fulfill the ‘eye for an eye’ rule.

There are currently 162 inmates on death row in Texas, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Since 1976, Texas has executed 602 people.

All of the people awaiting execution in Texas are murderers, with many of them having killed several people. They deserve a severe punishment for their crimes.

I think the real question here is why is there so much violent crime in that state?

With a population of around 31 million, it is inhabited by around ten million fewer people than all of Canada.

Yet, over the past 30 years, I can only think of three or four people in Canada who have committed crimes that might have deserved the death penalty if it were still a punishment in this country.

In the U.S., the ridiculous appeals process that takes years to drag through the courts has created a situation where the death penalty is no longer a real punishment, or a just one.

There are prisoners being put to death decades after they have committed their crime.

This past summer, Florida executed an 80-year-old man for a murder he committed in 1986, and there is a long list of prisoners who are scheduled to die after being in prison for as long as 50 years.

In any other modern Western country, those decades mean a person has already served a life sentence for their crime and would be due to be released.

I have followed the saga of Christa Pike for several years. She was only 18 years old when she was convicted of murdering a 19-year-old classmate in Tennessee in 1995.

Over the years, I expected to hear her sentence commuted to life in prison. However, the state of Tennessee insisted the death sentence be carried out.

She is now 50 years old and has been on death row for 32 years.

Yes, her crime was horrific, and yes, she deserved to be punished.

However, where is the justice in killing her after spending more than three decades in prison and being denied the basic freedoms of life?

Shouldn’t 32 years in prison have been the punishment in itself? At mid-life, you are no longer the person you were at 18 years old.

As of this writing, Christa Pike is in a hospital on a ventilator with doctors trying to save her life because the execution was botched, and instead of killing her, they maimed her.

One doctor speculated that if she survives, she will likely have brain damage due to oxygen deprivation.

If she survives, will they try to carry out the sentence again, or will someone step in and stop this madness?

The justice system in states that use the death penalty must be updated and improved. Toying with people’s lives over decades is a misuse of the law.

At the very least, they should find people for the justice system who can make a decision, and not take five years to make that decision. 

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