In next Tuesday's election, Wisconsin voters apparently get to "advise" legislators whether they should consider instituting the death penalty. This does not seem a good course to one newspaper editor, who offers one of the most dishonest arguments you will ever hear, using an ad posted by the Indiana attorney general's office for a death-penalty specialist as his case in point:
As Wren noted in his e-mail to me:
"Despite what proponents of the death penalty might want voters to believe, capital crimes prosecution and defense are specialized areas of legal practice; both the Department of Justice and the state public defender will need substantial increases in resources and sum-sufficient litigation budgets to handle these kinds of cases.
"Capital cases last a long time and consume enormous amounts of legal resources and all those costs will come directly from the taxpayers' pockets at the expense of public education, health care, environmental protection and all manner of other public services." Yet more reasons why Wisconsin should stay the course it wisely chose 153 years ago and turn down this attempt to get our state in the legalized murder business.
Why dishonest? Because people like this newspaper editor, who are always against the death penalty and will do everything in their power to prevent carrying one out, are the very ones who made capital punishment the long and expensive process the newspaper editor is complaining about. The never-ending appeal process, if it is proof of anything, is evidence that carrying out the death penalty is not quick or easy. It does not speak for or against the legality or morality or practicality of having capital punishment.
