THE DEATH OF EXECUTIONS
On Monday, The (less than) Supreme Court will hear arguments regarding the use of lethal injection to carry out the death penalty in Kentucky. If you're interested in the details, let me save you the trouble .... Justices Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, Alito, and probably Kennedy will vote to let them continue this barbaric practice. I say this only because they've continuously shown that, if Bush likes it, they like it. My disdain for the current court, however, is not the issue I wish to discuss. Rather, this case got me thinking about death penalty in general and how its time has passed. As in the case of illegal immigration, people have rather strong feelings about the death penalty. And also like the immigration debate, I'm surprised at the number of those on the left who lean more conservative in this area. For now, though, it seems that the country is crawling to my way of thinking as the number of executions in 2007 dropped to a 13-year low. I'd like to see the number be zero.
It seems to me that the argument against the death penalty can really be broken down into two main categories: logical and emotional. Let's start out with the logical ...
IT DOESN'T PREVENT CRIME - I think the evidence is pretty clear that the death penalty does not act as a deterrent for criminals. If someone is inclined to commit a murder, for example, they don't take a breath first and weigh the pros and cons of committing said crime because the death penalty might be an option.
WE KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE - Even if you're a fan of the death penalty, you can't have a soul and not be troubled by the number of death row inmates being freed as a result of DNA evidence. If one innocent person is executed, that is unacceptable to me. Well, guess what? ... It's a great deal more than one. And just saying it never happens -- as Bush did in the 2000 debates -- does not make it so.
IT MAKES US LOOK BACKWARDS -- Did you know that over 90 percent of the world's executions are performed in China, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and Iran? Is this really the type of company we want to keep? Much of the world ended the death penalty a long time ago, and the fact that we still do it hurts our ability to work with more enlightened nations. In a time where rebuilding our reputation is so important, why hold on to this outdated ritual?
IT'S EXPENSIVE - I don't want to get too bogged down with numbers, because I'm sure there are many ways to slice the data. However, by one account, "death penalty cases are estimated to generate roughly $470,000 in additional costs to the prosecution and defense over the cost of trying the same case as an aggravated murder without the death penalty and costs of $47,000 to $70,000 for court personnel." You want to subtract $10,000 here or there, fine. But the question is whether the money we spend is worth any "benefit" we might receive. Clearly, it's not.
I'm sure we will -- and should -- argue over the above list. But let me go to the more emotional and less tangible side of the debate. My gut tells me that the death penalty is something performed by uncivilized peoples, and as Stephen Colbert says: there are more nerves in your gut than in your head. I, of course, can't prove what I am about to say, but I would bet my shrinking paycheck that 100 years from now, President George Bush IV will look back at the death penalty as a horrible embarrassment in America's rich history.
And he will think this while attending his son's gay marriage.
Labels: death penalty, supreme court
posted by Trekking Left @ 1:30 PM
26 comments
26 Comments:
Not only does the death penalty fail to prevent crime, crime INCREASES following an execution.
The death penalty does nothing but perpetuate a culture of violence. Sister Helen Prejean's book "Dead Man Walking" addresses the death penalty more effectively than anything else I've read. The movie version, also very good, only captures a small fraction of the book.
This comment has been removed by the author.
I very hesitantly allowed that comment to post, Edgar, only because I know it was meant mostly sarcastically. But the other part concerns me. Sure, there are plenty of greedy, rotten sonsofbitches at the top, but there's also people like Bill Gates, Richard Branson. George Soros and Warren Buffett who are doing lots of good with their money.
Well, personally, I'm in the Reginald Denny school of forgiveness. Killing the perp won't bring you're loved one back, so why bother?
But don't we want a more accurate and efficient judicial system? Isn't that at the root of 2 of your criticisms? Stopping executions but still imprisoning folks falsely for felonies doesn't seem to me to be a good way to go.
And what happens with long sentencing? We've ended up with extremely high salaries for prison guards... don't they start at $70K, and don't some make $200K (with lots of overtime). Admittedly, the job is rotten. But locking people up is super expensive.
The heart of the matter comes down to... if we had an efficient and accurate judicial system (frankly, I think Europes' are better than ours in these aspects) would you still oppose the death penalty?
As I said, the vengeance aspect makes no sense to me. But the cost of supporting a murderer bugs me. I guess the only way to deal with it is to imagine the costs of them being outside of prison.
In "The Innocent Man" by John Grisham (a book of fact, not fiction), small-town police and prosecutor frame two innocent men. They are freed via a habeas corpus petition by the one sentenced to death. The other, sentenced only to life in prison, has exhausted his much more meager legal rights, but is freed as a byproduct.
The high expense of putting a person to death is the coldest motive for abolishing the death penalty. It may be the ugliest practice in our barbaric legal system.
Anonymous (12:07 PM) - I totally agree with your comments.
Regarding your question "if we had an efficient and accurate judicial system ... would you still oppose the death penalty?" ... While a better legal system would certainly make me feel better, the answer is yes, I would still oppose the death penalty. Because, at the end of the day, my main reason for opposing it is has to do with my feeling that it's not something a mature society should do.
A shocking bit of fact for you all: I am for the death penalty. I'd like to see the numbers behind the assertations that crime increases following an execution, because I simply don't believe it. I'd also like to see the numbers behind the cost of executions vs. prolonged and protracted prison sentences, because I also don't believe that legal fees plus the cost of the syringe will cost more money than feeding, clothing, and housing a convicted murderer for upwards of 30 plus years. I come in on the exact opposite side of this argument than T_L, for the exact opposite reason. Call me immature, but a guy like Timothy McVeigh deserved to be executed.
MCConf - Okay, forget about the money thing. But address my other arguments.
but there's also people like Bill Gates, Richard Branson. George Soros and Warren Buffett who are doing lots of good with their money.
Sorry t.l., gotta disagree with you there. Those four are maggots. If everyone lived like those four do then the earth would be entirely dead. Gates = H1B King of Siam. Branson and the rest are not the salt of the earth, they give away money because it makes them feel good to have people kiss their asses. You don't get to be a billionaire without being a ruthless oppressor and destroyer of the earth. Giving it all away on your death bed doesn't make up for it, IMO.
Don't forget about costs. Back up for most of these arguments is easily found at deathpenaltyinfo.org, among other places.
It's easy to be for the death penalty if you do not understand how it fails us on so many levels. Most people have never really taken a serious look at it. In New Jersey, the legislature just abolished the death penalty, following the recommendations of a study commission that thoroughly examined the issue. Who was on the commission? Five murder victim family members, a pro-death penalty republican police chief, two sitting county prosecutors, among others. The county prosecutors association was unanimous in supporting abolition - that's law enforcement. The police chief said it best when explaining that he learned how the death penalty prolongs the pain of murder victim family members by holding out false hope that they will actually feel better 10 or 20 years later when the killer is finally (maybe) executed. Many murder victim family members oppose the death penalty - see www.mvfr.org
Again, it boils down to this: The more you know about the death penalty, the less you like it. Of course there are monstrous killers who deserve whatever they get coming, but the system fails to deliver. Fewer than 1% of the killers eligible for the death penalty actually stay on death row to the point of extermination.
Separate the concept of the death penalty from the practice, and examine the practice with an open mind. If you believe in fairness, then you cannot agree with the system as it presently exists.
See www.NJADP.org for info on New Jersey, and www.murdervictimsfamilies.org for that perspective. And again, deathpenaltyinfo.org
And if you are ready to actually do something about it, then write a hand written note to your state legislators and your governor asking them to abolish the death penalty in your state, and visit www.CUADP.org to see AbolitionWear that you can use to let people know how you feel....
--abe
Need more information, Mickey? Check Google. Do a teeny bit of research. Doesn't take much to see that the death penalty is bad for our society:
"
Much of the current recent research suggests that the death penalty does not have a significant deterrent effect. One study by Sorenson and Wrinkle (1999) in Texas speculated that, if a deterrent effect did exist, it would be found in Texas because of the extreme numbers of death sentences and executions within the state. They not only found that there was no deterrent effect but that number of executions was unrelated to murder rates and felony rates as well. Another study by William Bailey (1998) in Oklahoma also found no deterrent effect; however, he did find that there was a significant increase in stranger killings and non-felony killings after Oklahoma resumed executions.
Moreover, Bailey conducted studies of several states, including Ohio, Oregon, North Carolina, and California and found no deterrent effect (Bailey, 1978, 1979, 1979, 1979). A study by Decker and Kohfeld (1990) used a 50-year time series from 1930-1980 to assess the effect of executions on murder rates in North Carolina, California, Texas, New York, and Georgia. Essentially, they found no deterrent effect in their analysis.
Most recently, according to a survey by the New York Times, states without the death penalty have lower homicides rates than states with the death penalty. Comparisons show that the average murder rate per 10,000 population in 1999 was 5.5 among death penalty states versus 3.6 among non-death penalty states (DPIC, 2001).
In California, instead of finding support evidence of a deterrent effect, Robert Harris found support for the brutalization effect (Harris, 1999). The brutalization effect suggests that executions increase crime rather than act as a deterrent. Harris found slight increases in homicides during the eight months following the execution. Another study, entitled The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America, examined differences in homicides and violent crime in 293 pairs of counties. They found no deterrent effect and higher violent crime rates in death penalty counties (Harries & Cheatwood, 1997)."
From the Maryland State Center for Criminal Sentencing Policy (http://www.msccsp.org/publications/death.html) but there are LOTS of places to find this information...
It's pretty simple--how do you say, "We're going to show everyone exactly how bad it is to kill someone"...and then kill someone?
abe@abolition.org and Queen Whackamole - Thanks for all the great information. Hard to argue with all that data.
Edgar - For the record, my partner in crime, theaverageman, actually made those comments. But I will jump in and say that Warren Buffett seems like a genuinely good rich guy to me. I mean, he's the one who is always pointing out how unfair it is that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.
Okay T_L, your other points...
WE KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE: Is there a single case that's been proven by DNA evidence or otherwise that any convict in the United States (let's say in the last 50 years) has been executed and later found to be innocent of the crimes for which he/she was punished?
MAKES US LOOK BACKWARDS: China and the U.S. are two of the largest national populations on the planet. Doesn't it make sense that we would be playing host to a bulk of the executions of convicted murderers in the world? As for the "enlightened nations," which ones are those exactly? I would argue that the country that brought you the atom bomb and the internet is probably the most enlightened nation on the planet, and I'm not talking about the kind of enlightenment you can get from spending time with monks in Tibet. Those folks haven't even figured out the obvious advantage of wearing pants.
IT DOESNT PREVENT CRIME: It sure prevents the convict from committing another crime. Maybe we should dig up the statistics of paroled convicts and the probability of them committing another crime instead of trying to focus on how the BTK killer getting the needle does or doesnt affect the next psycho murderer to walk down the tracks.
Your argument wins on the moral grounds, but I still think it's realistic to eliminate the uber-dregs of society if they've brought upon themselves the wrath of the American justice system by committing heinous acts against their fellow human beings, just my opinion of course.
Sorry t.l., I thought you were one and the same. Buffet is part owner of Moody's, among other holdings. They perpetrated a huge ($1 trillion +) fraud upon the public over bond ratings. This is just one grift I happen to know about. You don't get to be a billionaire without greasing a lot of corrupt palms along the way. I despise all billionaires everywhere.
"is there a single case..."
Dude, there have got to be HUNDREDS of cases, nearly always due to the convict's skin color and/or lack of money.
Here's just one example which, fortunately, could still be reversed.
You didn't read my query closely enough, T_L... I asked for one example of a convict being executed that was later found to be innocent. The link you provide refers to a case in TN where the one kid sentenced to death is still on death row.
Is there even one case where we know we've killed an innocent person?
MCConf - My responses to your responses ...
You asked 'Is there a single case that's been proven by DNA evidence ...'
My partner in (fighting) crime, theaverageman, is correct ... We've freed a number of people on death row due to DNA evidence. The point is that THEY WOULD BE INNOCENT AND DEAD if the executions had been administered right away. I'm sure we could Google around and find a case where someone was killed and proven innocent after the fact, but is it necessary to do that in order to make the point?
You said '... Doesn't it make sense that we would be playing host to a bulk of the executions of convicted murderers in the world?'
I don't think your logic works here. Your argument is basically that China performs the most executions because they have the most people. If that's the case, then why isn't India on the list? No, China performs so many executions because they simply use the death penalty as a tool of justice more liberally than other nations.
You said 'As for the "enlightened nations," which ones are those exactly?'
France, England, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Canada, Spain (I could go on and on) ... Making a bomb does not make you enlightened.
You said 'It sure prevents the convict from committing another crime.'
I'll give you something on this one. The death penalty can only be eliminated if really bad people are jailed forever with no chance of parol.
"one example"
Okay... Northwestern University's Center for Wrongful Convictions has compiled a list of 39 likely cases.
This Chicago Tribune article from 2000 investigates 3 cases in detail. and this Congressional report from 1993 mentions two, as well as lists 48 that were sentenced and later freed.
Well, of all people, Timothy McVeigh should not have been executed. Maybe given sodium pentathol and waterboarding to get info out of him, but not executed.
I think he might have had help from Christian right wingers in the US, and executing him quieted him forever.
OT. I am shocked, nay, flabbergasted that the dems are going to give us Hillary Clinton as their candidate for president. I would have voted for any, repeat, any dem besides her. Seriously, I give up. I no longer care what happens to this country.
The Dems are not counting michigan's delegates, so that vote's irrelevant. I don't think Obama and Edwards were even on the ballot.
averageman, thank you so much for that ray of sunshine. I am going to post your comment to my blog. I was really getting bummed.
waitasec -- Edgar, did you just.... smile?!? Nah, I don't believe it.
:D
A book for Buffett admirers.
Post a Comment
<< Home