I Never Believed In The Death Penalty – Then I Was Selected To Be A Juror For A Serial Killer’s Trial

The author at the top of the Space Needle in Seattle.

I was 14 the first time I really thought about the death penalty. Every day in freshman English, our teacher wrote a new question on the whiteboard. Before class began, we had to write a short essay on the topic. One day, the prompt read: “What is your opinion on capital punishment?”

Until that moment, I hadn’t given it much thought. Whenever I heard that someone had been sentenced to death, I just assumed they probably deserved it.