Osama bin Laden was a bad guy and a terrorist so we killed him. Two American citizens tied with Al Qaeda were recently killed by a CIA drone. Iran kills people for adultery or being gay. Pakistan looks the other way if someone gets killed for blasphemy or a woman is killed by her family because she was raped. At a recent Republican presidential debate Rick Perry got mass applause for how many people Texas has put to death under his watch.
When the state has the right to kill citizens with a trial and non-citizen terrorists without one, then it’s easier to make the argument that we can kill a US citizen terrorist without a trial, as demonstrated last month. If the state can execute people for first degree murder, then it’s easier to make the case for execution for other heinous violent crimes, like 2nd degree murder or rape. But why stop at just violent crimes? What if the US were to decide that being gay or blasphemous were worthy of death?
I know I’m coming dangerously close to a slippery slope argument, but I think it’s justified. What separates countries like the US who reserve execution for murder and China who executes political dissidents is political ideology. What separates the US’s use of the death penalty from Iran’s is the power of religious fundamentalists. With the current political climate, from the Tea Party’s showing in the last congressional election to the current slate of presidential candidates, a fundamentalist take over of the White House and congress is a real possibility. Then all it would take is the retirement of a single liberal Supreme Court justice and there would be no stopping the federal legislating of morality.
Nobody in 1930 expected the Nazi takeover of Germany and nobody today expects a dominonist take over of the US, but it’s not outside of the realm of possibility. If we were to have that kind of situation, I don’t think I’d want the state to have the ability of kill undesirable citizens. On principle I have no issue with executing murderers or rapists, but I don’t trust the government enough to trust it with the power to kill.
Another issue with the death penalty in the US is the horribly flawed legal system. It’s not about who’s guilty or innocent, it’s about who can afford the best lawyer and how gullible the jury is. Trial by jury is a great idea in theory, but trusting random people with no knowledge of law, little ability or training to evaluate evidence, and on average a demonstrated lack of critical reasoning skills with deciding maters of such significance seems like putting a scalpel in the hands of a mechanic with little to no instruction on how to do heart surgery. The whole system is a joke and amateurs should not be deciding who lives or dies.
Then of course, there’s the standard argument that with all the appeals (mandatory and voluntary) that you get with a death sentence, that it costs as much or more than life in prison. I would say to just have one appeal then get it over with (that would be far cheaper), but once someone’s dead there’s no further chance for exoneration, at least not a chance that matters. Everybody deserves the chance to clear their name if they’ve been wrongly convicted and access to the latest forensic technology has overturned more than a few convictions.
Besides, all it really accomplishes is revenge. Sure people are free to want revenge, but much of the legal system is designed to prevent them from taking it, so why should the people be free to take revenge?
Those issues combined lead me to conclude* that the death penalty should be abolished, not for moral or principled reasons, but out of simple practical ones.
This will be continued with state sponsored assassinations.
*This is a very recent conclusion, reflecting a fair amount of thought on the topic over the last few weeks. Before that I was in favor of the death penalty.
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Absolutely. Few would shed any tears if a mass murderer was executed. I support the death penalty for people like Hitler or Gaddafi or Saddam, since there was not even the slightest doubt of their guilt – they killed so many people and boasted of it so brazenly.
But as you've pointed out – sometimes people can be sentenced to death on REALLY sketchy evidence, like a few eye witnesses (and science shows that police can mess with a witnesses memory by using the power of repetition and suggestion: "Do you recall seeing a BLUE car?" "Did the suspect look LIKE THIS (while holding photo of said suspect up for the witness to see)". There have been a lot of cases in which the prosecution has simply gone after someone because the prosecutor and the police need to solve the case due to public pressure.
There's a book you might have read: "Mistakes were made, but not by me". It's a book about cognitive dissonance. In it, it shows examples of the police just being…. stubborn. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence contradicting their theories, the police will often prosecute or charge someone, because they are just bloodyminded and if they decide you are guilty, they'll try to move heaven and earth to prove you guilty. There's a passage about police interrogation procedures: "if the suspect avoids looking you in the eye, it means he is nervous, and therefore guilty. But if the suspect looks straight at you, and maintains eye contact, that's a sign that the suspect is challenging you, and is therefore guilty". You see the madness of it?
I generally like the police – but they are HUMAN. Humans make mistakes. The police have a real problem admitting any error, and prosecutors try to cover up evidence that contradicts their theories. There was a case I saw on National Geographic – a man who spent 10 years on Death row for a crime he absolutely could not have committed. How do I know this? He was IN JAIL the night the crime was committed. The police have records (that they tried to cover up) that he was in jail. Yet, despite that, the prosecution tried to get him killed and even to this day maintains he is guilty. Why? Because they can't admit fault. They can't admit error.
I don't trust the police or the prosecution enough to give them the right to execute someone. Like you, I ain't got a problem with killing a violent serial killer or a dictator or a torturer or even kidnappers. If anyone deserves death, that Joseph Fritzel guy deserves death. But time and time again the courts and the prosecution have shown themselves unworthy of the power of execution.
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Well said.