Aforementioned Promised Commentary: Supreme Court Death Penalty Decision

First, let's examine the Supreme Court's decision that the death penalty should be applied (in Kansas, anyways) when the reasoning for it vs. life in prison are roughly equal.

Justice David Souter said in dissent, "We are thus in a period of new empirical argument about how 'death (capital punishment) is different,' " while referring to studies showing that people who have been sentenced to death in the past have turned out to be innocent later. His argument is that with this possibility in the air, we must seriously examine the moral risk we take every time we put a prisoner to death.

Justice Scalia, on the other hand, finds such studies a bit biased. "Those ideologically driven to ferret out and proclaim a mistaken modern execution have not a single verifiable case to point to, whereas it is easy as pie to identify plainly guilty murderers who have been set free," he said.

Justice Scalia has a point. There is no clear evidence of any verifiably innocent person who has been put to death by the state. However, excuse me if I find this logic a bit worrisome. Even if there is no clear evidence to the positive, that is, in itself, no guarentee that a mistake has not been made. Even worse, it is certainly not proof that no mistake will be made in the future.

Where do I personally stand on the death penalty? It is one of the issues that completely confuses me. I feel that in a perfect justice system, perfect justice would demand that those who commit certain heinous crimes should forfeit their lives for doing so. However, we have an imperfect justice system, with imperfect judges, lawyers, witnesses, and jurors. Perfect justice is a pipe dream. On the aggregate, I feel that the marginal loss we would suffer by the wrongful execution of a single person would outweigh the loss we suffer from locking a person away for the rest of their natural lives for the same crime. At least the latter has some element of reversibility.

However, the law in many states allow for capital punishment, and in this case the question was, "When we've got good reason for life in prison, and good reason for capital punishment, what should we do?" The Supreme Court decided that, with each being equal, we fire up the proverbial chair. Again, I believe we should err on the side of caution. I do not believe, deep down, that I want complete death penalty abolition. Some cases, in fact, are so blatantly obvious that I feel little moral hazard in the application of capital punishment. Some cases are so heinous in nature, with the question of guilt being so apparently NOT in question, that the chance of wrongful blame is nil. In murkier cases, however, caution must be practiced. Our society should stand for nothing less on a question that we simply cannot answer incorrectly, lest we forfeit the moral highground.

For future discussion, I ask this question: Does the death penalty offer any quality deterrence? I believe empirical evidence gives us a resounding "no" to this question. Danny at Doc's Political Parlor made this outstanding point on the subject in a post regarding a recent editorial from Alabama Attorney General Troy King. King stated, "When a killer chooses to kill - even knowing that he will pay with his life - it is proof positive that the liberal prevention program approach will not work." First of all, thank you, AG King, for showing us yet another thing to blame on the liberals. What would we do without them? Why, we'd have to actually look for the REAL causations of complicated issues instead of turning to good old fashioned scare tactics.

Second of all, we'll move to Danny's point. He remarks, "Well, actually, when a killer chooses to kill even knowing that he will pay with his life, it's proof positive that capital punishment is no deterrent for him. He repudiates one of the strongest arguments for the death penalty when he says that a killer chooses to kill even knowing that he will pay with his life."

Indeed.

Supreme Court links from The Seattle Times. Check out Doc's Political Parlor at the link above, or Danny's exact referenced post here.