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Death Penalty: Let’s Be Honest
Jonah Goldberg has an excellent piece today on the dishonesty of the opponents of the death penalty. He highlights two points: (1) opponents create the situation (costs of litigation and associated administration) which they argue should be a basis for discarding the death penalty, and (2) they call it “unconstitutional” when the death penalty is actually written in the constitution (see 5th Amendment). They also point to the numbers of individuals on death row that have been determined to be innocent prior to their delayed executions. That is not an argument against the death penalty unless you really believe we cannot do a better job in investigating and adjudicating the innocence or guilt of people. Is it better to house an innocent person in jail for the rest of their life than to execute them? After all, eliminating the death penalty may actually reduce support for post-conviction innocence proceedings.
One can have a principled argument against the death penalty — but none of the ones put forward are actually that. The real question in my mind is one of relative value: Is the accused’s life of more value than the victim’s? If your answer is “no” you cannot be against the death penalty. You can be for better investigative and prosecutorial rules — eliminate practices that evoke false confessions, make the prosecutors focus on justice instead of political favor — you can be for limiting the penalty to those cases only where a life is taken, and you can be for quick and relatively painless executions, but you cannot be for the eliminating the death penalty altogether.
Remember that the alternative to a broken criminal justice system is not a more humane justice system — it is a system of private revenge and self-help. So if you break the system with unprincipled arguments you get private action. You cannot consistently value the life of the killer over that of the killed and maintain a justice system that is the sole purview of the state.
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Good arguments, Rodin. Over the years I’ve gone back and forth on allowing the death penalty, but my belief mirrors your argument. In one sense, I hesitate to say a killer’s life is less valuable than the victim’s. Life is life. But there are consequences for heinous crimes. And the death penalty is one of those: life for life. Thanks for the post.
Justice demands its availability for consideration, I wish we were more judicious in its application.
You can go on youtube and watch real executions. I wish we were made to face the reality of what we do. See a face that was alive and is in short order not.
This command is Genesis 9:6, the deliberate taking of another person’s life is punishable by death. I used to have a problem with this, but the cost to society to keep these people alive is untenable. For instance, in Paris yesterday, a man released from a conviction of murder early, killed again. If we can’t keep a killer locked up for life, then that person needs to be eliminated.
It really comes down to what is the purpose of punishment.
We can’t answer questions like “should we have a death penalty?” until we know the goal of punishing criminals. Solve the why, and the how will follow logically.
Yes, there are aspects of the European “justice” system that escape me. That Anders Behring Breivik can kill 77 people — mostly children– and then a lower court determine that his solitary confinement as part of a 21 year sentence — not death– is inhumane. Happily that decision has been reversed, but you never know what will happen if there is another level of appeal. Yes, I know that Breivik can be detained under Norwegian law longer than 21 years, but I cannot imagine being a family member of one of the victims and watching this legal wrangling for someone who should not be breathing.
Like Christ’s admonition that all of the commandments can be condensed to “love God and your fellow man” the rationale for a punishment system is that which best keeps your society from resorting to private vengeance and self-help.
This is a false choice. The victim’s life can be more valuable and the accused’s life still be too precious to take away.
Scenario: A drunk driver crashes into someone killing him.
Questions:
My answers:
@umbrafractus, please expand or provide an example of whose life would be “too precious” to take. Unless your belief is that all life, regardless of conduct, is too precious to take?
I really believe that we cannot do a better job. I’ve been through way too many building inspections to believe that the government should have this power.
The problem with this argument is that when you get rid of the death penalty, not much happens. There are a bunch of States and countries that don’t degenerate into tit-for-tat revenge killings. Michigan, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Minnesota, Alaska, Maine–all of which haven’t had it for decades and even 150 years–are these places all living nightmares? No. Does Texas have anything to show for its steady stream of executions? No.
As for Goldberg’s two arguments: (1)Yes, it’s disingenuous to use the cost argument, and I wish they wouldn’t. (2)The death penalty is unconstitutional in several states, even if it isn’t federally, and as above, it makes little difference.
While I am sympathetic, there are a few things I might inquire about before going to #1 answer.
Fair point.
Difficult to prove or disprove. But I would expect that Texans are broadly understood to take murder very very seriously.
I think you and @jasonrudert might be talking about the issue of deterrence. I always thought that was a silly argument, since we all agree you can’t measure that. I have a hard time believing that a person who is in the throes of murderous thoughts worries about the death penalty. So to expect number to go up or down, or credit deterrence is not helpful. For me, the issue is justice.
Agreed.
I think this is a difficult subject to discuss. The arguments made for and against it always fall short in convincing the other side because it’s an issue that is underneath a lot of other stuff.
Personally, I am opposed to it. I live in a state (Massachusetts) that hasn’t had it in my lifetime, and I’m happy about that. I respect people who advocate for the death penalty, and I understand their logic. But my mother’s Congregationalist and Baptist ancestors were inhabitants of New England for a couple of hundred years, and most of them opposed it, for valid reasons. I wish I could find in my attic some of their thoughtful writings against it.
It has always been and it always will be a contentious issue. There are compelling arguments on both sides.
Disagree wholeheartedly. A killer kills, we don’t kill the killer, and all of a sudden we value the victim’s life less? That’s a non sequitur. If someone visits evil upon another, do we then do evil to attain justice?
I believe that the state should only sanction, enable, facilitate, or finance the taking of a life when there is no other alternative to prevent the taking of more lives.
Now, I’m not hard up on the idea. If we decide as a society that taking lives is the State’s prerogative, I’m not going to gin up some 501(3)(c)(lamma lamma ding dong) to combat or protest it. But if the State takes a life, that’s retribution, not justice.
That is my position, yes. I tend to agree with the last few Popes that capital punishment, tough not inherently indefensible, is unnecessary and that mercy towards those who least deserve it is a virtue to be cultivated.
I don’t wish to debate the point as I only came to this conclusion about a year ago, so I do not condemn those who feel differently.
Actually, if you look into the background of a lot of the shootings and killings going on in Chicago and other cities, an awful lot of them are exactly “tit-for-tat revenge killings”.
See, for that very reason I would rename the Department of Justice the Department of Legal Proceedings and carve LEGAL PROCEEDINGS into the marble on all the courthouses.
I think this raises a very interesting point. How much violence in our society occurs precisely because either people have lost confidence in the system or they do not have the moral and civic education to accept the state action as a substitute for private justice? Does this more frequently occur in states where there is no capital punishment? Given the time it takes to go from sentencing to execution, is there a meaningful difference between a state where capital punishment is banned and one where it is disused?
Frankly, I wouldn’t think so. If where the death penalty was applied, one had a month between the arrest and being displayed on a gibbet outside of city hall, the death penalty would have some meaningful deterrent effect, both against future murderers and revenge killings.
When our court system is so overburdened that it takes a year to go to trial and more than a decade to exhaust all one’s appeals, not to mention that a third of murders go unsolved and the murderers presumably unpunished (by the justice system, at least) whatever discouraging effect of the death penalty is going to be highly limited.
You can disagree with the capital punishment and you can devise alternative ways of framing the question, but I don’t think you can call my formulation a non sequitur. It is precisely the sequitur that makes it contentious. An eye for an eye, etc. is a sequitur that is harsh and un-nuanced. It is such a strong sequitur that the state intervenes and removes it from the private sphere. One of the achievements of our society is that we have converted justice from an “outcome” to “a process.” So we are prepared to accept as justice even an acquittal so long as the process was properly followed so that all accept the outcome as just.
Don’t get me wrong; if someone hurt a member of my family I’d feed him to himself over a period weeks, then make him achieve room temperature.
But the State should stand for life, forward and backward. So, yeah,, committing an evil–even if it’s state sanctioned–does not absolve, eradicate, or even ease the evil done before. Claiming that because we, through the State, don’t kill someone shows that we devalue someone who has been killed does not follow.
Susan Quinn (View Comment):
For me, the issue is justice.
I approach this from a very weird place. Both sides of the argument that sound true to me are slippery slope arguments.
The libertarian says, “We don’t want government to be anyway comfortable with killing people.” Most libertarians would agree morally that the most egregious serial killers should die but enabling the state to exercise power over people doesn’t lead to anywhere good.
My own opinion (based on no scientific evidence because you can’t get scientific with alot of humanity) is that if you outlaw the death penalty your culture becomes effeminate in an indulgent and narcissistic manner. Killing a man is a terrible act and accepting the death penalty accepts that the world is terrible. When a society does away with the death penalty it implies that a society can move beyond the tragic and unmovable nature of life. A weakness that rich, peaceful and democratic societies are especially heir to.
P.S. I don’t think femininity is bad or good. I am worried that our culture breeds a pathological Rousseauianism that is feminine in nature.
Well said. And it is the very terribleness that underscores how important the person was (any of us, actually) whose life was unlawfully taken. Forgiveness is G-d’s prerogative. We vest power to pardon in one chief executive. It is not that life imprisonment is a lesser punishment (it can be argued it is worse). It is that there is something different about murder that involves the decision to rob another of life that calls forth a forfeit, lest the value of the life retained be seen as more important than the life taken. It says something that society is willing to be diminished through the taking of life.
I’m going to take issue with calling capital punishment “unjust” (even though I hate to disagree with the Boss-man). Justice is defined as “giving someone his due.” And, as conservatives, we have a thang for natural consequences. Murdering someone should endanger one’s life, imo. And, it’s not just my opinion — God says so in all five books of the Torah (Prager referred to this so often, I had to rummage around on the internet and found out he’s right).
I also think we need to modify Amy’s #2 slightly. What do we mean by “protect the populace?” Does that include the prison populace — and especially the prison guard populace? If so, death penalty > life imprisonment.
I do think it indicates the cheapening of human life when we’re unwilling to execute (as opposed to murder) the murderer, no matter how evil the act (and, yes, we do need to make distinctions). You can see the truth of this in our own culture, because the same people who advocate for abortion and euthanasia (“mercy” killing) — which invariably leads to convenience killing — also oppose the death penalty. Somehow keeping someone in prison for life is more “merciful” than sending him to meet his Maker, who will sort him out.
And, P.S., I’ve been on all sides of this issue, too. But, if you think you’d deliver “justice” to someone who heinously murdered one of your loved ones — you’re probably in favor of capital punishment.
I have no problem calling it “retribution.”
Premeditated killing = death
Death while committing a related felony = life without parole
All other killing = prison, length depending on circumstances
Touch my stuff = I’ll kill ya
/s/ Francis
We can probably do better, but it will never be a perfect job. It is clear that innocent people would have been executed but for people like the Innocence Project. It is certain that innocents have been executed. There exists near metaphysical certainty that there will be innocent individuals executed.
It’s bad enough for a lab to fraudulently testify about drug testing and get people imprisoned. They can be freed and compensated, as inadequate as that is. Between two technicians in Massachusetts and New Jersey, around 30,000 drug cases are being dropped because of fraudulent testing.
Would you want to bet your life on other work from these labs?
But not merely fraudulent but scientifically invalid methods (matching of hairs based on appearance, for example) have been used in capital cases not merely to indicate race but to indicate identity.
There have been and will continue to be mistakes.
I submit that that might well be an argument against the death penalty for those who hold every human life sacred.
I agree with this. Also, because the victim’s life has already been taken, it’s not a matter of choosing between them.
My view on this was formed when I was about ten. I saw a documentary on tv, just a snippet, a man in a white coat standing in front of a blinking machine, talking about calibration of poison to use in executions.
I thought, who ordered this?
I do not want the state killing its own citizens.
And if we didn’t lock up so many non-violent criminals, we’d have room to lock away the (relatively rare) homicidal maniacs who can never be rehabilitated.
For what it’s worth, the modern Catholic argument against the death penalty (a conditional, rather than absolute, objection) goes something like this:
If it is necessary that an aggressor dies to protect the innocent, kill him. If it is unnecessary, charitably give the person every opportunity to repent and embrace the love of God — opportunity which does not require releasing or pampering the prisoner.
Note that this is not an argument about common sense. It is an extraordinary standard based on the extraordinary charity of Christ’s love. Also note that necessity and opportunity can be judged according to individual circumstances.
That said, the United States were formed as a generally Christian society. Originally, civic punishments took many forms which included corporal punishments and execution. Clearly, values have changed. And clearly the movement toward restorative models of justice has failed. In many cases, opponents of death penalties are motivated by faulty logic and ridiculous leniency. But rejection of a death penalty is not necessarily foolish.