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In the comments to a recent post by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rivka in Respectful of Otters, I stated "This is not the place to engage in my usual capital punishment rant."
This, however, is.
I recognize that intelligent, conscientious people can come to different conclusions about the morality of the death penalty in the abstract. I can even understand how good Christians can come to that position.
There are three reasons to support the death penalty: specific deterrence, general deterrence, and retribution. Specific deterrence, meaning that the individual who committed the murder cannot murder others if he or she is executed, is a morally supportable position, in my view. General deterrence, meaning that others will be dissuaded from committing murder if murderers are killed, sounds nice, but, absent other considerations, is not much more than the barbaric proposition that we should be willing to execute individuals to provide an example to others. Furthermore, studies have shown that general deterrence simply does not work.
Which brings us to retribution as a justification for execution. Retribution is what is called for every time a prosecutor, politician, or other death penalty proponent claims that execution is needed to "bring the victim's family closure." In essence, the convict must die as a blood sacrifice for the blood they shed.
Whether or not you view retribution as a morally justifiable position depends a lot on your religious and world view. Personally, I have a very hard time reconciling retribution with the view that all individuals are made in God's image and therefore are endowed with innate human dignity. I know others that feel, however, that not executing murderers somehow dishonors their victims. I would like to think that this country has moved beyond simple bloodlust, but I recognize I may be wrong.
All of that, however, is in the realm of abstract moral reasoning.
I have a much harder time -- in fact, I find it nearly impossible -- to understand how a thoughtful, well-informed person can support the death penalty as it is being handed out in the United States today.
It is so fatally easy to point to the monsters. John Wayne Gacy. Henry Lee Lucas. Ted Bundy. Surely, these men who brought such terror and grief to so many families should die. Everybody knows about these walking embodiments of evil.
But how many people know about Johnny Penry, who has has a lifelong history of mental retardation but was nonetheless found competent for execution by a Texas jury? In 2002, the US Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that executing the mentally retarded constituted "cruel and unusual punishment". They explicitly reversed a decision of only thirteen years prior, when they found that retardation (interestingly enough, in Penry's case) was no bar to execution. To get the latest death sentence, the prosecutor explained away Penry's history of testing out as mentally retarded as Penry being "anti-social and unmotivated to do well on tests" . The defense contention that Penry's diagnosis of mental retardation occurred before he ever needed it as a legal defense fell on deaf ears. He is currently on death row in Texas.
Even sadder is the case of Charles Singleton, who was executed in January in Arkansas. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1986 those who were too mentally ill to understand what was going on could not be executed. Singleton, who had been diagnosed as delusional, psychotic and a paranoid schizophrenic, was given anti-psychotic medication so that he could be sane enough to be killed.
And then there is Rudolph Holton. Holton spent 16 years on Florida's Death Row, until DNA evidence exonerated him in 2003. He is certainly not alone. Since 1973, 23 people have been freed off of death row in Florida alone. In 2000, Governor Ryan of Illinois was so troubled that 13 men had been freed from death row in his state that he instituted a moratorium on executions.
There have been cases of police and prosecutorial misconduct, and cases where exculpatory information was kept from the defense. There have been cases of inept or completely incompetent (or in one case I have read of, drunken) defense counsel. And in some states such as Virginia or Texas, draconian time limits on the introduction of new evidence means that it is damned hard to get a new trial even when new evidence does arise. And that's not even touching upon the racial and economic inadequacies. (I think it is very telling that the prosecutors in the O.J. Simpson case did not even pursue a death sentence -- they knew, given the sort of counsel he could afford, that they would not get it. Now contrast that with how they would deal with the average defendant accused of lying in wait to brutally stab two people to death.) Not to mention the push to execute people who were teenagers when they committed their crimes.
I don't think "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" is morally defensible legal policy.
Ah, but why not simply correct the abuses? Leave the death penalty in place, but change how it is administered?
Because the very existence of the death penalty creates pressure for it to be applied. Who is to say where the line between "horrible enough to execute" and not is to be drawn? And how do we reconcile ourselves to the fact that that line is drawn differently in different states? Especially in more conservative areas of the country, prosecutors are hesitant to appear "soft on crime." Why should someone get the death penalty in Florida when for the same crime in San Francisco they would not?
The only answer is to outlaw the death penalty nationwide. As a civilized society, we should be willing to forego retribution so that we may not be guilty of possibly executing the innocent. We should not let our desire to punish murderers bring us to possibly commit murder ourselves.
*For those of you interested in this issue, I suggest you check out Errol Morris's documentary The Thin Blue Line, which is about a case in Texas. This film was instrumental in Randall Dale Adams being freed from death row.
rivka in Respectful of Otters, I stated "This is not the place to engage in my usual capital punishment rant."This, however, is.
I recognize that intelligent, conscientious people can come to different conclusions about the morality of the death penalty in the abstract. I can even understand how good Christians can come to that position.
There are three reasons to support the death penalty: specific deterrence, general deterrence, and retribution. Specific deterrence, meaning that the individual who committed the murder cannot murder others if he or she is executed, is a morally supportable position, in my view. General deterrence, meaning that others will be dissuaded from committing murder if murderers are killed, sounds nice, but, absent other considerations, is not much more than the barbaric proposition that we should be willing to execute individuals to provide an example to others. Furthermore, studies have shown that general deterrence simply does not work.
Which brings us to retribution as a justification for execution. Retribution is what is called for every time a prosecutor, politician, or other death penalty proponent claims that execution is needed to "bring the victim's family closure." In essence, the convict must die as a blood sacrifice for the blood they shed.
Whether or not you view retribution as a morally justifiable position depends a lot on your religious and world view. Personally, I have a very hard time reconciling retribution with the view that all individuals are made in God's image and therefore are endowed with innate human dignity. I know others that feel, however, that not executing murderers somehow dishonors their victims. I would like to think that this country has moved beyond simple bloodlust, but I recognize I may be wrong.
All of that, however, is in the realm of abstract moral reasoning.
I have a much harder time -- in fact, I find it nearly impossible -- to understand how a thoughtful, well-informed person can support the death penalty as it is being handed out in the United States today.
It is so fatally easy to point to the monsters. John Wayne Gacy. Henry Lee Lucas. Ted Bundy. Surely, these men who brought such terror and grief to so many families should die. Everybody knows about these walking embodiments of evil.
But how many people know about Johnny Penry, who has has a lifelong history of mental retardation but was nonetheless found competent for execution by a Texas jury? In 2002, the US Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that executing the mentally retarded constituted "cruel and unusual punishment". They explicitly reversed a decision of only thirteen years prior, when they found that retardation (interestingly enough, in Penry's case) was no bar to execution. To get the latest death sentence, the prosecutor explained away Penry's history of testing out as mentally retarded as Penry being "anti-social and unmotivated to do well on tests" . The defense contention that Penry's diagnosis of mental retardation occurred before he ever needed it as a legal defense fell on deaf ears. He is currently on death row in Texas.
Even sadder is the case of Charles Singleton, who was executed in January in Arkansas. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1986 those who were too mentally ill to understand what was going on could not be executed. Singleton, who had been diagnosed as delusional, psychotic and a paranoid schizophrenic, was given anti-psychotic medication so that he could be sane enough to be killed.
And then there is Rudolph Holton. Holton spent 16 years on Florida's Death Row, until DNA evidence exonerated him in 2003. He is certainly not alone. Since 1973, 23 people have been freed off of death row in Florida alone. In 2000, Governor Ryan of Illinois was so troubled that 13 men had been freed from death row in his state that he instituted a moratorium on executions.
There have been cases of police and prosecutorial misconduct, and cases where exculpatory information was kept from the defense. There have been cases of inept or completely incompetent (or in one case I have read of, drunken) defense counsel. And in some states such as Virginia or Texas, draconian time limits on the introduction of new evidence means that it is damned hard to get a new trial even when new evidence does arise. And that's not even touching upon the racial and economic inadequacies. (I think it is very telling that the prosecutors in the O.J. Simpson case did not even pursue a death sentence -- they knew, given the sort of counsel he could afford, that they would not get it. Now contrast that with how they would deal with the average defendant accused of lying in wait to brutally stab two people to death.) Not to mention the push to execute people who were teenagers when they committed their crimes.
I don't think "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" is morally defensible legal policy.
Ah, but why not simply correct the abuses? Leave the death penalty in place, but change how it is administered?
Because the very existence of the death penalty creates pressure for it to be applied. Who is to say where the line between "horrible enough to execute" and not is to be drawn? And how do we reconcile ourselves to the fact that that line is drawn differently in different states? Especially in more conservative areas of the country, prosecutors are hesitant to appear "soft on crime." Why should someone get the death penalty in Florida when for the same crime in San Francisco they would not?
The only answer is to outlaw the death penalty nationwide. As a civilized society, we should be willing to forego retribution so that we may not be guilty of possibly executing the innocent. We should not let our desire to punish murderers bring us to possibly commit murder ourselves.
*For those of you interested in this issue, I suggest you check out Errol Morris's documentary The Thin Blue Line, which is about a case in Texas. This film was instrumental in Randall Dale Adams being freed from death row.
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However, "trial by a jury of peers" is what leads to these sentences (yes, I know I'm simplifying things). But, is it truly a jury of the defendant's "peers" when they often pick jurors that are not of the same socio-economic background, race or gender?
As an aside, post-conviction DNA testing is available in most (if not all) states. The technology has changed so much over the past 10 years even, that it really is an individualization thing, where it used to be 11% of the population, etc. Retesting all of those samples would be time-consuming and would definitely have a financial limit, and may or may not change the results--but could be a beneficial tool for those individuals on death row. We had an execution stayed for post-conviction DNA not long ago. Interesting, but I don't want to be anywhere near that case...and I don't even know how it came out.
My randomness will go watch some tv now.
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Unfortunately, I share your concerns about the system. It isn't administered fairly. It is not possible for someone who doesn't have her own money for a good lawyer to get "justice" in this country, whether in a civil or criminal case.
I'm left feeling that we need to be damned careful, but that some people do need to be dead.
FWIW, as a Unitarian Universalist, I do believe that every human is born with "inherent worth and dignity." I happen to believe that humans can choose to behave in such ways that they lose that worth. That's how I, unlike most UUs, believe that a death penalty COULD be justifiable. I just don't think it's justifiable with this system.
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I want economic quotas. For every poor person we kill, we have to kill a rich one. And taken from the opposite end of the economic structure. For a lower middle class execution we need an upper middle class execution. For someone in the bottom 99 percent of society, we need a top one percent execution to balance it out. I also want a lot more things to qualify for the death penalty. Especially white collar crimes which impact far more people than most murders. Look at enron. Look at worldcom. Look at Arthur Andersen. These are the people we ought to be sending to death row. These people had every opportunity to not commit crimes. Most weren't horribly abused like most murderers. Most had extreme economic advantages while the murderers had extreme economic disadvantages.
You start executing the people who are convicted of the crimes at the top of the pyramid, and you'll see some general deterrence. A kid in an urban gunfight, probably doesn't really know better but Jeffrey Skilling did. The guys at Tyco did. But they knew they would at worst get a slight financial slap on the wrist and comparitively light time.
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