A few more thoughts on the death penalty
I very much doubt that technology will ever solve this problem, either. If anything, Radley Balko’s series on Mississippi’s fraudulent forensic investigators suggests that technology has made juries and judges more amenable to pseudo-scientific claptrap, not less. Science is also unlikely to replace or diminish the emotionally-charged circumstances surrounding capital punishment trials.
In a follow-up post, Bunch argues:
Will doesn’t say it this way, but you often hear the argument that life imprisonment is worse than execution because the criminal has to suffer in prison and then he dies anyway. But if life imprisonment is just as awful — nay, worse — than execution, why should we be happy that supposedly innocent people have been stuck in prison with no hope of parole for the rest of their lives? And how many of these innocents will manage to prove their innocence without the neverending legal process that has freed the innocent from death row?
I’m not sure if life imprisonment is worse than execution. The death penalty, however, is irrevocable. Setting an innocent man free isn’t a perfect solution, but it is better than offering our belated condolences to his family after he is wrongfully executed.
Imprisonment also allows us to address many procedural questions after defendants have been tried and found guilty. The finality of execution, on the other hand, means that every procedural concern must be addressed before punishment is carried out. As I’ve argued elsewhere, I think this detracts from any deterrent effect derived from capital punishment. And because of the system’s inherent fallibility, we still risk executing innocent defendants.
UPDATE: Here’s an excellent op-ed on the death penalty from McClatchy.
November 10, 2009 9 Comments
A Time to Kill
Every time I start to waver on my support for the death penalty — as I did in the wake of another New Yorker piece, about a possibly-innocent man who was executed — I see a story like this and it snaps me right back into line. I’m all for containing prosecutorial abuses. I’m all for reforms to the way prosecutors seek the death penalty: Only in cases where there’s an eye witness or a confession or videotape evidence, perhaps. Maybe raise the bar for “scientific” evidence* to include only DNA evidence that conclusively proves the perpetrator was there.
But those monsters — the animals who would do that to a family of human beings — don’t deserve to live, and I don’t buy the argument that it’s a harsher penalty for them to live out their lives in prison. I want the state to wreak vengeance upon them. And, god help me, I want them to suffer when it happens. If this makes me a bad person, then so be it.
I’m basically agnostic on the moral issues surrounding state execution: if a criminal is obviously guilty of a heinous crime, I don’t have any qualms about putting him to death. I am suspicious, however, of our practical ability to distinguish between airtight death penalty convictions and cases that deserve a second look. I also think that the alternative to execution – lifetime imprisonment without parole – satisfies the demands of retributive justice without risking the lives of innocent defendants.
On another level, there’s some real tension between calling for greater prosecutorial oversight and the underlying rationale for executing prisoners. At its core, the death penalty is supposed to deter crime. If the process is hamstrung by judicial oversight, the risk of execution is unlikely to actually convince potential offenders not to do bad things. So we’re left with a system that occasionally delivers some morally satisfying verdicts but still risks killing innocent defendants. To me, this is just about the least satisfactory outcome imaginable.
N.B. – I’ve linked to these articles before, but you really should read Rod Dreher on the death penalty and The New Yorker on the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.
November 4, 2009 56 Comments
