page 4
daily nebraskan
tuesday, October 14, 1980
POD
Beafli penalty is gymbol of uncivilized
To the right is a photograph of where seven hu
man beings, now on Nebraska's death row, might
sit when they take their last breaths.
It is a stark instrument of death, designed for
no purpose other than the state-sanctioned action
of burning life from a body. It is our opinion this
death machine should join the guillotine and the
hangman's noose in museums, where they all can
serve as reminders of a time when man was less
civilized.
In 1979, that was the opinion of a majority of
our state senators, when they passed a bill replac
ing the death penalty with a mandatory 30-year
prison sentence.
But that was not the opinion of our governor,
who vetoed the bill after the legislative session
ended. The veto probably would not have been
overridden, because of the slim margin by which
the bill passed.
Ironically, the month after Gov. Charles Thone
vetoed the repeal bill, Florida carried out the first
involuntary execution since 1968, and the first
execution since Gary Gilmore turned down his
right to appeal.
Now, some of the men on Nebraska's death
row are running out of appeals, and Thone will
have to back up his decision in vetoing the bill
by signing death warrants. Nebraska could have
its first execution since 1959, when mass murder
er Charles Starkweather was fried.
Arguments against the death penalty are
abundant. First, the obvious: More than seven
murders have been committed since Stark
weather's death, and some of the most brutal
killers were found insane and not imprisoned.
Obviously, at best, the penalty can be applied
only arbitrarily.
Secondly, the possibility exists that our imper
fect judiciary system could execute an innocent
person. One such error is too many.
But the biggest problem with the death penalty
is that its presence on the books retards improve
ment of our penal system. The ultimate (alleged)
deterrent, because of its finality, is the center
piece of the system.
Using that device as the centerpiece of the
system costs Nebraska and other states hundreds
of thousands of dollars to pay defense attorneys
during endless appeals of death sentences. That
money could be better spent either upgrading law
enforcement agencies or studying the causes of
homicide, but only after the death penalty is re
moved will the money be available.
And only after the penalty is removed may
legislatures and courts begin effective work
toward a more perfect system of justice, under
which killers are not treated arbitrarily and those
convicted of other crimes are not thrown into a
penal system that teaches crime rather than pro
tects society.
And onlv after the penalty is removed mav w.
call ourselves civilized.
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Early survival training required for living alone
BOSTON -Our friend is taking a new course in life. She
is Learning to Live Alone.
She has, we tell each other, all the prerequisites for en
rollmentthe right background, the right training:
As a young woman she had graduated from parents to
husband without a day of private schooling.
For 19 years she had majored in togetherness.
When her marriage ended six months ago, it was only
natural that she would embark on a crash course in
independent studies.
Because our friend is a tough grader, she has told us: "I
flunked marriage." The truth is that she dropped out, that
they both dropped out. But the sense of failure is an
honest one .
There was something else. In those last months of
marriage, she was haunted by the idea that sooner or later
she would have to be alone and that she was unprepared.
She had missed some sort of survival training that should
have been a required course when she was younger. She
expressed a sense of growing urgency. She had to learn
about it now . . . while she still could.-
So, today our friend is a determined student, even a
grind at times, compelled by the need to pass this course
in adult education.
Well, we are both graduates and post-graduates and we
understand as we watch. She has done her homework,
passed the quizzes, crammed for mid-terms. Eaten and
cooked three-course meals by herself. Spent an entire
weekend alone.
We go down the checklist, nodding with approval at
our friends studies. She has gone back to basics. Even the
new man who had met her and cared for her understood
that she was not ready for doubles. She was still learning,
slowly , about number one.
The two of us, her friends, quote statistics at each
other and at her. Twelve percent of the population lives
alone at one time or another. More than 20 percent of the
households in America consist of one person. One out of
three marriages ends in divorce. The average wife outlives
her husband by a decade.
We are realists, pride ourselves on it, and the figures tell
us that sooner or later the odds are aloneness. We have en-
couraged her to accept it. We have offered her a bumper
sticker truth: You have to be able to live with yourself to
live with anyone else.
It occurs to me that this is our security. If one genera
tion wanted to learn typing or teaching as "something to
fall back on," now we regard Learning to Live Alone as
some sort of strange security.
We take it for granted. We encourage each other and
our children to learn it when they are younger. We under
stand when our friends enroll for refresher courses.
But I wonder about it all. Not so long ago, aloneness
was regarded as a temporary condition. It was suspect. At
the time of the American Revolution, less than 4 percent
of the households contained only one person.
Even now other places and other cultures, aloneness is
an oddity, an accident, an illness more than a luxury.
Through human history, people have lived in clusters
where their only privacy was in their thoughts.
It's possible that aloneness is, inpart, a modern Ameri
can elective. We fall into it and, yes, we sign up for it in
droves: The working young, the divorced, the widowed.
Those who can afford to live by themselves choose to.
The reality resounds through the course-of-life catalog.
In fact, like our friend, we are driven now by an uneasy
feeling that togetherness may be only a pause between
single states. The anxious sense of what is basic has shift
ed. The bottom line seems to have moved.
Yet I wonder sometimes whether we struggle to
protect ourselves from loneliness by liking it. Whether this
independent study is an advance or a retreat. I wonder
whether it is some American madness or self-improvement
bravado.
Yes, I guess it is necessary for our friends to learn to
live alone now. But if it felt good, would she have to
study so hard?
(c) 1980, The Boston Globe Newspaper Company
Washington Post Writers Group
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&sWJ
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Vl Dr Nebraskan published by the UNL Publications
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