Tinkering with the Death Penalty
The death penalty is a serious moral and legal issue in America. I explained my position in detail in an earlier post, Issue: The Death Penalty, and I won't repeat those arguments here.
Now it seems we're going to tinker at the edges of the problem, apparently in an effort to make it seem less cruel and unusual. The President in his State of the Union speech proposed funding specialized training for lawyers defending clients in death penalty cases. He would provide $50 million to private groups simply to train lawyers. Congress has offered a more ambitious program, the Justice for All Act, with $75 million directed at improving capital defense procedures and systems in the states. This Act aims at enhancing the performances of both prosecutors and lawyers in capital cases.
In discussing these competing approaches, a Washington Post editorial took the position that the President's proposal doesn't go far enough:
Mr. Bush's new concern for the problem of indigent defense is truly welcome. Having stood before the nation and acknowledged the issue candidly, however, he needs to take bolder steps to address it. Supporting what Congress has already done would be the place to start.
The Post editorial didn't go nearly far enough. These proposals may make some people feel better when their state government executes a fellow human being in their name, but it does nothing to address the larger issues. With apologies for quoting myself from the conclusion of the earlier post,
I'm against the death penalty, at least until it doesn't matter how much money an accused person has and the legal system doesn't make mistakes. And even in the unlikely event these problems are solved, I doubt I'll ever be able to accept that our social contract should include empowering the state to kill us.
No amount of tinkering with this morally indefensible and legally flawed ultimate penalty is going to change my position. We need to join the rest of the civilized world, which has largely abolished the death penalty. Our military forces aren't allowed to kill prisoners who present no threat; why should our government be permitted to kill it's prisoners?
Now it seems we're going to tinker at the edges of the problem, apparently in an effort to make it seem less cruel and unusual. The President in his State of the Union speech proposed funding specialized training for lawyers defending clients in death penalty cases. He would provide $50 million to private groups simply to train lawyers. Congress has offered a more ambitious program, the Justice for All Act, with $75 million directed at improving capital defense procedures and systems in the states. This Act aims at enhancing the performances of both prosecutors and lawyers in capital cases.
In discussing these competing approaches, a Washington Post editorial took the position that the President's proposal doesn't go far enough:
Mr. Bush's new concern for the problem of indigent defense is truly welcome. Having stood before the nation and acknowledged the issue candidly, however, he needs to take bolder steps to address it. Supporting what Congress has already done would be the place to start.
The Post editorial didn't go nearly far enough. These proposals may make some people feel better when their state government executes a fellow human being in their name, but it does nothing to address the larger issues. With apologies for quoting myself from the conclusion of the earlier post,
I'm against the death penalty, at least until it doesn't matter how much money an accused person has and the legal system doesn't make mistakes. And even in the unlikely event these problems are solved, I doubt I'll ever be able to accept that our social contract should include empowering the state to kill us.
No amount of tinkering with this morally indefensible and legally flawed ultimate penalty is going to change my position. We need to join the rest of the civilized world, which has largely abolished the death penalty. Our military forces aren't allowed to kill prisoners who present no threat; why should our government be permitted to kill it's prisoners?
10 Comments:
Jarrod, I agree. The arguments over whether the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime are simply inconclusive. But that isn't the point; even if it could be shown to deter crime to some meaningful degree, that still wouldn't justify the state killing its citizens through a capricious system riddled with flaws.
As far as deterrents are concerned, I think many would agree that life without parole is as much a deterrent as death, especially considering the conditions inside many of our prisons. But, that's an issue for another day.
I have a slightly different take on this.
Oops, hit enter too soon...ahem
I don't see how one can be pro-life and pro-death penalty. To me that seems like a contradiction in terms. I think the culture of life is more than just catchy rhetoric, I believe it is one of the foundations in the social fabric of our society.
Given the odds of dying in prison, I suspect life is a death sentence all its own.
The issue of the death penalty has always been a troubling one for me. There have been times when I had absolutely no grief over it (Timothy McVeigh comes to mind), but there have been numerous unconscionable applications of it as well. While in theory I believe that true sociopathy can't be cured and is certain to lead to more killing (in which case the execution becomes self-defense), I believe that it's also relatively rare. In practice, a country that can't feed or educate many of its children should hardly be in the business of making irreversible decisions on behalf of God.
FreeAtLast--well said!
I have a completely different take on this than any I've seen here. For me, the death penalty has nothing to do with being a deterrent of crime. Please. Many of the criminals know their fellow criminals will kill them on the street in a far worse manner than the state.
To me, the only time the death penalty should be used is when the person in question is a serial killer; someone if they're ever let out (by some freak govenor in the mood to hand out pardons and we all know that's not as crazy a notion as one would think) or escape, there is no doubt they would kill again and kill many.
Someone like Scott Peterson doesn't deserve the death penalty. This isn't something that should be dished out simply cause we're disgusted with the crime. In the end, he had a reason -- he wanted his freedom from fatherhood and husbandry. I don't think the average person on the street is in danger if he somehow gets out. By that criteria, I don't think Tim McVeigh should have been put to death either. For one thing, I think he should have been questioned a lot more but that's another story.
If a criminal lets you know he will kill again, he just loves it and is what he's all about -- that's the kind of person I can get behind putting to death. Otherwise, I'm fine with life without parole.
Unique POV, Esther. I'm inclined to agree.
A good subject, Tom. I agree with you for the most part, but in common with Esther I would make an exception for serial murderers. There are not many of them, but they are a special case.
I would also make an exception for a man convicted of a first degree murder committed in a prison. In that one case, I think the death penalty is a deterrent.
I think the public's willingness to forego the death penalty is often related to whether a life sentence means life, and it still doesn't in all jurisdictions.
Jarrod,
But if you have no effective penalty for those who have already committed murders and are now in prison for them, you are exposing the rest of the prison population to their whims. The alternative is to isolate these people, and that is incredibly cruel.
Some people respect human life not at all, and it seems as if some actually like to kill. What is your solution for the rest of the prison population? Someone sent to prison for 5 years should not lose his life at the hands of a completely depraved person who knows there can be no reprisal.
Thanks to all for your excellent comments!
MOM, you've hit another nail square on the head. Conditions in many, if not most, of our prisons are absolutely unacceptable. However, I don't see that as part of the death penalty issue. When a person is terribly abused in prison, which happens often, or killed it isn't because the killer is someone who should already have been executed. It's because many prisons are out of control, with gangs of thugs and primitives in control.
What I think really constitutes cruel and unusual punishment is when someone is sent to prison for a crime that merits a sentence of a few years and ends up being molested, abused, beaten up, and terrorized. No one deserves that.
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