The death penalty has been in the news several times this week because of three high profile murder cases.

We learned last week that Vance Boulter, who killed former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, will serve a life term in prison.

The killer of a United Health Care executive in New York is pleading insanity, which would mean a manslaughter sentence instead of a life term. The world is waiting to hear whether the assassin of Charlie Kirk will face the death penalty in Utah.

I have two personal experiences that relate in some way to the death penalty issue. One almost 50 years ago involved the murder in St. Cloud of someone who was a neighbor on Eatros Place and one of my former babysitters. The other, which happened two weeks ago, was a garden version of Wild Kingdom.

My former neighbor was stabbed to death at the Newman Terrace pizza parlor at St. Cloud State University. Her parents were interviewed by news media. They expressed shock and sadness. They thought the Midwest was a safe place.

I was too young to sort through the issue of what should happen to the murderer. I guess I wanted him punished in some way, but never formed an opinion about whether it should be death or a life prison term.

Mainly I was just sad that Cathy was gone. The justice system, no matter what it did, would not be able to bring her back.

I also won’t forget what happened in the garden. I have coffee in the Boulder Estates garden almost every morning after breakfast because it’s a peaceful place.

We feed birds, which leads to cardinals, finches, orioles, bluejays, mourning doves, robins, and hummingbirds. It also includes sizable contingents of blackbirds and sparrows.

On this one recent morning a tiny sparrow was feeding, apparently oblivious to how it was surrounded by five or six blackbirds. When it just stayed put I thought something might happen. It did. One of the blackbirds swooped down on the sparrow and killed it.

I felt a small but measurable amount of outrage. For a moment I wished I had a pistol that shot BBs so I could shoot at the blackbirds.

The feeling was just momentary. Shooting blackbirds would have been an over-reaction. More violence was not the best answer.

Even when a killing involves a human victim, two wrongs don’t make things right. A death penalty wouldn’t have brought back the Hortmans or the United Health Care executive.

President Trump is wrong to call for vengeance in the death of Charlie Kirk. We should seek justice rather than revenge. The assassin should pay for the crime, pay for silencing Kirk’s voice, but with the advances in mental health treatment it might be possible to change him into a non-violent person.

An important question that comes into play with violence prevention is whether violence is instinctive or if it gets brought out by social factors. I think both of those theories have some truth.

There’s an underlying potential for violence that should be controlled by our modern sense of humanity. Hopefully we’ve reached the point of being able to prevent man’s inhumanity toward man. With the development of social media in the past 30 years, we instead have more factors that can provoke it.

Before social media most of the serious oddballs were loners. They kept to themselves. Now they can go online and connect with like minded individuals from anywhere in the world.

As oddballs communicate they can kindle emotions. They can bring out anger, prejudice, or a belief that established political, economic or social systems are unfair. This can fan fires to the point that it turns the potential for violence into reality.

Society’s response has to involve teaching children at an early age that violence is never appropriate except in self defense. If a child hits when another child budges in line or takes a crayon there should be an apology and some type of punishment.

Older children and adults need to adhere to a more detailed set of non-violent norms. We need to be totally committed to the idea that there are no exceptions. It’s not okay just because it’s within the home. It’s not okay as a response to being insulted or deceived.

Instead peaceful conflict resolution should prevail. It has to be based on a firm foundation of basic kindness and fundamental good sense.

–Jim Muchlinski is longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent