This article by the governor of Maryland contains a lot of the usual reasons to be against the death penalty, which are wrong for the usual reasons. The death penalty is not actually a deterrent, he says, and executing someone is a lot costlier than just keeping them in prison for life. But one of the main reasons those two things are true is that anti-capital punishment people such as the governor have so complicated and lengthened the appeals process that people can sit on death row for 20 years. (And, as it has been pointed out by many people, the execution does deter one specific person.)
But he raises one issue that is troubling even to those of us who still feel the death penatly must be an option for some people who commit certain crimes:
These examples prompt a deeper question. Notwithstanding the executions of the rightly convicted, can the death penalty ever be justified as public policy when it inherently necessitates the occasional taking of wrongly convicted, innocent life? In Maryland, since 1978, we have executed five people and set one convicted man free when his innocence was discovered.
The most convincing argument against the death penalty, then, is not one of the usual liberal ones but a libertarian one. How can a government we think is barely competent to build roads be trusted with the most serious life-and-death issue there is? But even here we have to be careful. The "DNA tests show innocent people have been on death row" argument contains an obvious counterpoint: The DNA testing that wasn't available before is now and can help us be more sure that only the guilty face the death penalty.
Comments
DNA can help us be more sure in some cases, but DNA wasn't even a factor in a good number of the cases of innocent death row inmates that have come to light. There's a lot more at issue -- tortured confessions; leniency bargains offered to jailhouse snitches who are coached to give perjured testimony against people they don't even know; suppression of evidence that exonnerates the accused.
Halting the death penalty won't mean a damn thing if we don't fix the real problems. The wrongly convicted are wrongly incarcerated for life, which is a fate every bit as bad as death, if not worse.
Another take on this would be to place the "penitent" BACK in the penitentiary...just give the prisoners what they need to exist (and think about what they did)...no cable TV, no radio, no books (save for religious matter),and no conjugle visits. Give them basic food, water, and as little communal time with other inmates as is allowable.
It works for Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona.
B.G.
BTW...place a few "gulags" up near the northern part of Alaska..away from anyone and anything...and them DARE them to "exscape" (sic).
Sure it would be HARD TIME...but if they made better choices, they wouldn't BE there in the first place...would they?
As long as inmates can conduct business outside the bars (while jailed) as well as they could when they were "free", the system will be flawed.
If you've ever tried to imagine what life would be like if you were imprisoned for a lengthy stretch, you've come to your own conclusions about how you'd handle it, or not handle it, based on your personality type.
Me, I'd hope to be able to lie on that cot in the bathroom-sized cell and read books all day -- constantly if need be. I could actually remain fairly sane if I could have enough fresh books and a decent reading lamp, I think.
A twenty-year wait for a death penalty appeal to peter out or be affirmed would be enough to last most of us into middle age if not a doddering old age, by which time I have to wonder if my poor brain and body would be up to exoneration and the freedom to get on with my remaining life, or even up to a suit for restitution for false imprisonment, etc.
I'd probably have to sue somebody to afford the remedial physical rehab I'd need and health care, after living in a 5x8 concrete cell, to get me back into any kind of shape to enjoy whatever time was left to me in the fresh air.
If the liberals are that keen on retrying every violent felony conviction in the country (which implies a 100% bankruptcy of confidence on their part in our American judicial system, by the by, but no surprise there), and they can truly keep a person in prison for life cheaper than on death row, I say have at it.
We're not going to let the convicted out easily in any case, and a significant number of criminals are of a type who find a life of incarceration far more torturous than the still-speedier end of a needle in the arm or what have you.
As long as, of course, the liberals promise not to follow up with yet another suit further claiming that life imprisonment is STILL too torturous for these poor unfortunate lawbreakers, so that it, too, is cruel and unusual (unusual?) even for the incorrigibly inhumane people now serving their life sentences in lieu of death.
But, short of that fanciful scenario --
If life in prison rather than execution is the liberals' whole camel, rather than just nose of their camel, they could talk to me. Even then, I imagine I'd make them sign something VERY binding.
;^)
While I believe that, in general, justification for the death penalty rests on what is a profoundly shakey ethical basis, I am willing to concede the possible benefit. What I will not concede, and what I find to be completely unjustifiable in the death penalty debate, is the contention that the death penalty could be more practical than life imprisonment, given the financial costs of keeping someone incarcerated. The question is not about whether a more-streamlined death penalty would save money--I don't doubt that it would. The question is whether we can justify allowing government that level of coercive power over human life on the basis of a pragmatic argument about finances.
Simply put, the less power of the sword a government has over its citizens in a representative democracy, the better. We must ask of ourselves and our officials whether the death penalty is in accord with a general ethical norm for this nation. In the end, it's not about harsh polemics against the other side; it's about the limits of the sanctity of life in the face of unspeakable horror. These are big issues, and they don't need to be problematized by a specious argument about cost.
Michael: I agree that the death penalty is too serious to be reduced to a pragmatic financial equation. But the point I was trying to make is that it is unfair for the capital-punishment opponents who have helped make the appeals process so costly to then turn around and use the relatively low costs of life imprisonment as a point in their favor.
"Simply put, the less power of the sword a government has over its citizens in a representative democracy, the better." Let me think about that one. Isn't it the appropriateness of the punishment that matters, more than its severity? We need to know what the rules are and what we face if we break them, in plain and simple language.
This has always been one of the most troubling issues for me; I've gone back and forth on it all of my adult life. Every time the courts add, with good reason, groups of people who shouldn't face the death penalty -- the retarded, those too young to know right from wrong, maybe soon the profoundly mentally ill -- it gets us closer to the point where we wonder if anybody should face it. But every time I consider completely removing the ultimate punishment from the table, I wonder what we would then do about the ultimate crimes, such as someone already in prison for life killing a guard or someone who brutally rapes and kills a defenseless child.
It all depends on how we try to balance "the limits of the sanctity of life in the face of unspeakable horror." If economics is too simplistic a way to draw the line, so is "killing killers is wrong." That does not get nearly close enough to prioritizing unspeakable horrors.
These days they dole out the death penalty as if it were Halloween candy. They should save it for the truly irredeemable, the Specks and Gacys.
I don't have a problem with the death penalty. However, I do have a problem with the idea that dangerous felons might be running free because police and prosecutors are too lazy to do their jobs properly and find it easier to shaft the first person they can beat a confession out of.
The cost of incarcerating versus killing is beside the point; you can't put a price on the value of the public's faith in the system and this may soon be irretrievably lost.