Death Penalty Issues
Michelle Malkin has a post on Stanley Tookie Williams, on death row in California. (Yeah, I'm reading lots of right-wing blogs... doesn't make me a right winger, just means they're dealing more with the issues I find interesting these days. And to be honest, I'm finding it much easier lately to have an honest disagreement with members of the right than the left, who too often resort to name-calling and temper tantrums).
There's no death penalty in Australia. There's currently a big issue about an Australian on death row in Singapore (yet again) for alleged drug smuggling, covered here. It's interesting because I can see both sides of the argument, and while I find myself coming down against the death penalty, it's not for the reasons more usually touted.
I couldn't give a damn about the lives of cold blooded murderers. I believe strongly in social causes, but I don't think that any civilisation can afford to allow appalling behavior an easy excuse. It's sad that some people have terrible childhoods and bad role models, and turn out bad as a result, and we should strive to do all we can to improve those childhoods and prevent the problem rather than cure it. But when society starts making excuses for those who execute innocent people and laugh about it, society is in trouble, and even more people will get hurt as a result. Society is a system of rules. No rules, no society. These are the choices we're faced with.
My reason for opposing the death penalty isn't that I feel sorry for murderers, it's this. The death penalty kills innocent people. They don't get the media coverage of the big cases and convicted murderers that have everyone up in arms. Most of them are poor, and can't afford good representation. The system makes mistakes... and no surprise there, all systems make mistakes. And I really don't understand why so many on the right in America, who distrust every government institution except the military, insist on giving the power of life and death to one of the most obviously hit-and-miss government institutions around -- the criminal justice system. They wouldn't trust the tax department with the power of life and death, even though it makes probably fewer mistakes than the criminal justice system.
I sympathise completely with the urge for retribution, and no doubt if I were in the same position as some of the victims' families, I'd feel exactly the same way. But my point is that the issue needs to be looked at more broadly than just one obviously guilty person who almost certainly deserves to die. The problem is all those other people, whose cases we don't see in the media. The penalty may be applied effectively to many, many guilty people that no one in their right mind could feel sorry for... but then, as a matter of statistical certainty, there'll always be that other guy, in the wrong place at the wrong time, or mistaken for somebody else, who falls through the cracks. Some of the numbers being tossed around by various groups researching the death penalty are scary, I've heard mentioned that as many as ten percent of convictions, in some places, might be wrong. Now, killing one innocent person in order to get nine guilty ones might be acceptable in a war of national survival, but in peacetime, against one's own citizens, it does not seem to me very civilised. The reason we have law (in a liberal democracy, anyhow) is to establish civilisation, as opposed to anarchy and barbarity. If a law or penalty no longer serves this purpose, then I can't see it has any logical or moral reason to continue existing.
For me, keeping alive men like Stanley Tookie Williams is the unpleasant but ethical price to be paid for keeping alive all the innocent victims of wrongful conviction. Many of the families of the former's victims will surely be unhappy about it, that's understandable. But the families of the latter will be grateful.
There's no death penalty in Australia. There's currently a big issue about an Australian on death row in Singapore (yet again) for alleged drug smuggling, covered here. It's interesting because I can see both sides of the argument, and while I find myself coming down against the death penalty, it's not for the reasons more usually touted.
I couldn't give a damn about the lives of cold blooded murderers. I believe strongly in social causes, but I don't think that any civilisation can afford to allow appalling behavior an easy excuse. It's sad that some people have terrible childhoods and bad role models, and turn out bad as a result, and we should strive to do all we can to improve those childhoods and prevent the problem rather than cure it. But when society starts making excuses for those who execute innocent people and laugh about it, society is in trouble, and even more people will get hurt as a result. Society is a system of rules. No rules, no society. These are the choices we're faced with.
My reason for opposing the death penalty isn't that I feel sorry for murderers, it's this. The death penalty kills innocent people. They don't get the media coverage of the big cases and convicted murderers that have everyone up in arms. Most of them are poor, and can't afford good representation. The system makes mistakes... and no surprise there, all systems make mistakes. And I really don't understand why so many on the right in America, who distrust every government institution except the military, insist on giving the power of life and death to one of the most obviously hit-and-miss government institutions around -- the criminal justice system. They wouldn't trust the tax department with the power of life and death, even though it makes probably fewer mistakes than the criminal justice system.
I sympathise completely with the urge for retribution, and no doubt if I were in the same position as some of the victims' families, I'd feel exactly the same way. But my point is that the issue needs to be looked at more broadly than just one obviously guilty person who almost certainly deserves to die. The problem is all those other people, whose cases we don't see in the media. The penalty may be applied effectively to many, many guilty people that no one in their right mind could feel sorry for... but then, as a matter of statistical certainty, there'll always be that other guy, in the wrong place at the wrong time, or mistaken for somebody else, who falls through the cracks. Some of the numbers being tossed around by various groups researching the death penalty are scary, I've heard mentioned that as many as ten percent of convictions, in some places, might be wrong. Now, killing one innocent person in order to get nine guilty ones might be acceptable in a war of national survival, but in peacetime, against one's own citizens, it does not seem to me very civilised. The reason we have law (in a liberal democracy, anyhow) is to establish civilisation, as opposed to anarchy and barbarity. If a law or penalty no longer serves this purpose, then I can't see it has any logical or moral reason to continue existing.
For me, keeping alive men like Stanley Tookie Williams is the unpleasant but ethical price to be paid for keeping alive all the innocent victims of wrongful conviction. Many of the families of the former's victims will surely be unhappy about it, that's understandable. But the families of the latter will be grateful.
4 Comments:
You suck! Oh wait, just kidding, we're sticking to honest disagreement.
No doubt there could be innocent people who are wrongly convicted and executed, human institutions being not perfect. But to be blunt, the numbers will be very very small. As in, single digits per year, tops. Substantially more people in the US die by lightening strikes each year than are executed, total. FAR more people are killed by lightning than are innocently executed.
Life isn't cheap but probably far more innocent people die from each of the most bizarre random cirsumstances you could envision than innocents who die by the chair.
You call the justice system hit-or-miss , but I think that's unfair. The deck is stacked heavily in favor of the accused, and certainly no one is ever executed without having many years on death row to get their story out, and endless appeals, and a cottage industry of people who get their jollies and make their careers by free those wrongly convicted.
There's an old saying, "I'd rather let 99 guilty men go free than convict one innocent person." Sounds dandy, you hear that a lot, but does that really make sense? Won't those 99 criminals on the loose likely harm a hell of a lot more than one person?
I think the benefit of *permanently* eliminating known killers once and for all outweighs the cost of killing innocents on rare occasions. I'm not sure whether capital punishment is a "deterrent" to would-be killers; but it certainly deters the fried remains of Ted Bundy and Timothy McVeigh from ever killing again.
Meanwhile, a lot of us find it deeply disturbing that Charlie Manson himself is alive and well and comes up for a parole hearing every couple of years. Uggh!
One thing I'd add is that, I wouldn't on principle oppose certain restrictions about capital punshment. Such as, only use it for multiple murderers, or don't apply it in cases of circumstial evidence only. Stuff like that.
But again, when you compare the number of murders each year with the much smaller number of executions, it's a fact that even if you're guilty, it's substantially unlikely you'll ever face execution.
Hi Kevin
A very civil disagreement, my compliments :-)
I guess it depends on your view of human falibility. One of the things that inspired me to become a writer, I think, was the realisation that much of the world was not like most people thought it was... and that I myself often believed one thing very strongly, then discovered later I was wrong. People get it wrong all the time, and some can be fooled -- lawyers know all the tricks for influencing or outright fooling juries, and the better ones can employ them effectively. The courts get it right most of the time, but I'll always believe there's too much inevitable error in all human systems to trust something as final as the death penalty... at least when there's an alternative in life without parole.
Case in point: in Australia we had the Lindy Chamberlain case (think Meryl Streep -- 'a dingo's got my baby!'). It wasn't just the jury thought she was guilty, it was most of the country. She just looked guilty, and everyone responded to prejudices about how an innocent mother must act -- Chamberlain didn't fit the preconception, and she was locked up in 1982. If we'd had a fast-acting death penalty that had been implemented before new evidence turned up in 1986, that would have been it for her. As it was, she was let out in '88, and thank God for (then) new forensics that proved her innocence. (Dingos have since been found to be far more aggressive toward people, especially children, than previously believed, especially in tourist areas where they lose their fear of people).
Well of course, that's the key difference ... we've got no dingoes in the US!
Post a Comment
<< Home