No one who purports to be against the death penalty would state the same view if it were their child who had been murdered.

If the death penalty prevents one murder, then it is unconscionable to refrain from using it.

Posted December 13, 2005 2:13 AM by William Lexner

Thats a sweeping statment - parents have forgiven their child's murderer before now.

So countries with the death penalty have lower murder rates than countries without, do they?

Posted December 13, 2005 2:25 AM by Aquila

> If the death penalty prevents one murder, then
> it is unconscionable to refrain from using it.

A-and we should euthanize everyone in prison today, since it's a certainty that one or more of them will commit a murder at some point in their lives. It's unconscionable not to.

I wonder how it can be that while every civilized nation on earth outside of the US has set capital punishment aside, we Americans persist -- in the face of all evidence to the contrary -- in believing that it is useful. Are we really that barbarous?

Posted December 13, 2005 2:36 AM by Robert Rossney

Getting away from the right or the wrong of the death penalty (and blow me down, I would never expect California to be one of the states in favour of it), I don't understand how this man could remain on death row for 26 years and now is to be executed, surely that falls under the heading cruel and unusual punishment?

Posted December 13, 2005 2:58 AM by Naomi

I don't oppose the death penalty in principle, but I'm forced to oppose it in practice.

There's a class of crime that's so far beyond the pale that these acts aren't committed against individuals, but against Society in general. In those cases -- which don't even necessarily include acts of simple murder -- I don't think it's inappropriate for Society to apply the punishment of its choice against such a person. It's not about revenge and it's not even about Justice, necessarily; it's about creating an appropriate response to an act.

But I'm just as certain that as a society, we haven't earned the right to put convicted criminals to death. We all agree on the goal of equal justice for all, but most would also agree that it's still an ideal and not the reality. And even when a conviction looks solid...who can predict what new evidence or analytical techniques might become available in ten years' time?

And on top of everything else, it turns out to be cheaper just to lock 'em up for life. The ultimate expression of Society's contempt for this sort of criminal is the statement "We value his life so little that we're not willing to spend one penny extra to take it from him."

In any event, I can't respect any governor who refuses to meet the condemned face-to-face. I can agree or disagree with a governor's refusal to extend clemency, but he has to relate to the convicted as a living, breathing human whose life will soon be at an end. Not as the subject of a thick file-folder and a one-page summary prepared by an aide.

Posted December 13, 2005 3:02 AM by Andy Ihnatko

As I recall it, Pres. Bartlet in West Wing has a wonderful reply to the "what if your kid got hit" argument. He expressly states that as a father, he'd want all hell to rain over whoever lifted a finger against his daughter - which is why the government, and not fathers, take care of justice. I think he resigns temporarily because of this conflict of interest as well.

Posted December 13, 2005 3:02 AM by Mikael Johansson

How many innocents would Mr Lexner be willing to officially murder in order to make sure that one person wasn't unofficially murdered?

It's definitely known that innocent people have been executed, but rather fuzzy if anyone was saved by the deterrence of a death sentence, especially looking at the usual motives of murder. Most statistics seem to show that both in modern times & through history, capital punishment makes very little difference to the murder rate, which I assume is the assumption behind that second sentence in the first comment. Indeed, the modern history of Australia is built on the foundation of convicts many of whose death sentences for relatively slight offences were commuted to transportation. The very large list of capital offences, with public executions (see Oliver Twist, for instance), seemed to make very little difference to the crime rate, which slowed mainly due to social changes, but that's a very big subject.

Posted December 13, 2005 3:08 AM by Epacris

Death penalty cases take a long time because there are squads of death penalty-opposing lawyers who take on every case and fight each case in every way imaginable. Pro bono.

It's after midnight, and none of the news sources online seem to have a story about it.

Jon Carroll porobably isn't right every single time he utters a word, but it sure seems like he is.

Posted December 13, 2005 3:39 AM by Lucy Kemnitzer

"if it were their child who had been murdered" -- I thought that this was the reason that 'The Rule of Law' is invoked as one of the markers of a civil society, rather than the simple, natural, rule of blood-feud, vendetta & pay-back. And the reason that judges are meant to disqualify themselves if they have some 'interest' in a case which might lead observers to believe that they would be biassed.

This story came through about half an hour ago (Tuesday evening here) California executes former gang leader

Posted December 13, 2005 4:17 AM by Mez

Oops, sorry, this is the link that was supposed to go into the above comment:
The Rule of Law

If anyone is looking for what's happened to Margo Kingston's Webdiary since, it's gone through some difficulties, but is currently reachable at margokingston.typepad.com, via webdiary.com.au

Posted December 13, 2005 4:30 AM by Mez

No one who purports to be against the death penalty would state the same view if it were their child who had been murdered.

Julie Welch; Bud Welch

Posted December 13, 2005 4:45 AM by Todd Larason

Well, I have no children. But if any of my family or partners were murdered in a place which had the death penalty (a fortunately far fetched 'if') -- I'd be morally obligated to do everything possible to save the killer's life.

Not only because I am most firmly opposed to the death penalty, but because the aforesaid partners and family members are as well; they'd haunt me if I were to do otherwise.

As for the death penalty preventing murder:

It IS murder. That would be, um, what I have against it.

Posted December 13, 2005 4:57 AM by Marna

The penalty for murder could be the death of one's entire family, the burning down of one's home and eternal obloquy on one's family name, and murders would still happen. Some are coldly planned, some happen in a white-hot instant of rage, but the impulse that leads us to murder overrides all considerations of reason which a deterrent might affect. Otherwise we wouldn't do it.

We lock up murderers because they've demonstrated that they are not safe people. They did it once and they could do it again. Of course, none of us are safe people, and possibly half the ones we lock up are people who have killed the only person that ever mattered to them enough to kill, and would never do it again anyway. But we don't know that, and it makes us feel safer to think that people are divided into murderers and non-murderers and we're the second type, so we lock them up.

The purpose of the justice system is not to make the victim's family feel better. If it were, we'd have gladiatorial games and public hangings, drawings and quarterings. Institutionalised lynch mobs. Something like that.

Posted December 13, 2005 5:00 AM by Zander

I just read a piece today by of all people Harold Bloom saying that both Milton and Dante were condemned to death by states that had the death penalty and if the sentences had been carried out, we wouldn't have had the Paradiso or Paradise Lost. We weren't so lucky in the case of Gabriel Garcia Lorca. Nor, of coure, was he.

Posted December 13, 2005 5:05 AM by Jonathan Shaw

Jon Carrol makes an excellent argument.

Indeed, the death penalty is a tragic archaism. It is out of place in a society that values humanism above all else.

Posted December 13, 2005 5:08 AM by Vera Nazarian

No one who purports to be against the death penalty would state the same view if it were their child who had been murdered.

Counter-examples to your statement have already been given. You are plain wrong here. And even if you were right, that is no defence of resorting to animal instincts. (See the Bartlett quote above).

Yes, it would be harder, but people would still be against the death penalty despite having their children killed - and some of them are.

If the death penalty prevents one murder, then it is unconscionable to refrain from using it.

A fascinating view for two reasons.

The first is that the death penalty causes murders through miscarriages of justice. The blood of such inevitable miscarriages is on the hands of everyone responsible for the law - in a democracy this is every single voter. Before you even have a case here, you need to first establish

The second is what it does for civil liberties. Bans on all guns and all knives and ropes and poison and cars... are just the start of it - and they will prevent a few murders, and without the downside of killing innocent people.

Posted December 13, 2005 5:09 AM by Francis

There was an interesting suggestion made by a caller to the Charles Goyette show on Air America this morning.

The caller suggested that a conviction for what are currently capital offenses called for a life sentence. This would a safeguard against innocent people being found guilty (for various reasons: overzealous police or prosecutors, incompetent defense attorneys, unbalanced juries, etc.) and executed.

But, the caller continued, a SECOND capital conviction WOULD call for the death penalty. He also suggested that the second conviction should be for a non-simultaneous murder. The odds of someone convicted of two separate murders being innocent would be low enough to justify the risk of imposing a death sentence.

The example brought up in the discussion was Banzai Bob Vickers, a young punk who was sentenced to Arizona State Prison for a murder and went on to murder his cellmate. (Since the cellmate was not only locked in the same cell with Vickers at the time, but in a wheelchair, he couldn't fight back very well when Vickers set him on fire.) Vickers was executed for the second crime.

I think the suggestion has considerable merit.

Posted December 13, 2005 5:38 AM by Bruce Arthurs

I stated this in another forum, but it is relevent here as well.

I used to be pro-death penalty, partly beause it was successful on preventing repeat offenses.

Until I figured out that it was just as effective against the convicted who actually had committed no crime.

And unlike releasing someone from a life sentence with "sorry about that," there is no review to the executed, only their family.

Posted December 13, 2005 5:41 AM by Craig R.

The British experience is that the number of innocents executed in error exceeds by more than an order of magnitude the number of innocents murdered by convicted killers after their release from prison.

Over the past 15 years, the court of appeals has reversed a frighteningly large number of guilty verdicts -- which, in the case of pre-1965 judgements, led to hangings -- on the basis of DNA samples obtained from evidence retained after the trial. The historical false-positive rate for murder convictions in the British judicial system seems to be somewhere between 10 and 15%. I should note that the American judicial system comes from the same roots and bears significant similarities to the British one.

(You may argue, "ah, but our judicial system is better!" Yes, well, you may indeed do so, but you ought to remember that it's run by the government -- the same people who run the post office. Mistakes happen, and they're a lot commoner than most people think.)

Meanwhile, the recidivism rate among criminals convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, including those who remain in prison and those who are released on license, is very low -- under 1%.

Run the math: take a sample of 100 murder cases and bring the accused to trial and conviction. If you execute them, then you've just executed 10-15 innocents. If you use imprisonment for life with release under supervision for those who are no longer considered a threat, you contribute to the death of 1 or fewer innocents.

Thus, the death penalty for murder kills more innocent lives than it protects.

(This assumes that we are admitting only utilitarian arguments, rather than arguments for deterrence -- disproven pretty conclusively back in the 1860s -- or revenge. I can't argue against revenge other than to say that anyone who desires to extract it in kind for a murder is themselves a bloody-minded murderer-in-waiting, whether they want to do it in person or by using the state as a proxy.)

Posted December 13, 2005 5:43 AM by Charlie Stross

Aquila: I never stated that countries with the death penalty had lower rates of murder than those without. Muder rates depend on many factors.

Robert Rossney: When you make absolutely inane and ludicrous strawmen arguments like 'euthanize everyone' you make it impossible for anyone to take your arguments seriously.

Epacris: We must trust in our system and work harder at assuring that we never let the innocent be punished. Mistakes do happen in life, and they are lamentable.

Todd Larason: That is a link to a nutjob website. For the sake of argument, I'll allow that it's truthfull and not skewed.

Bud Welch is a buffoon. Being an idiot is not a crime, unfortunately.

Marna: This is the real world, and you're talking about ghosts. I really hope you don't vote.

Zander: Murders would still happen, yes.....but there is no way to count how many times a person has said to themselve's "It's just not worth it," and put the gun down. To try to use extrapolation or recorded murder rates from medieval times to get a realistic idea of these numbers is obtuse and delusional.

Vera Nazarian:

1. Carroll doesn't make an argument here. If you're referring to elsewhere, please link.

2. What society is based on humanism? Which society purports to value humanism above all else? I like your fiction, Vera, so I'm sorely tempted to cut you some slack, but that statement is absurd.

Francis: You made a decent argument until the end there....what's up with the extension of the argument? How does removing a murderer from the gene pool correlate with banning firearms or motor vehicles? (It's not that I don't understand what you're trying to say....I do. I simply think it's a silly deduction)

Posted December 13, 2005 5:56 AM by William Lexner

William Lexner said: Mistakes do happen in life, and they are lamentable.

I would suggest that the state-sanctioned execution of a potentially innocent person needs a bigger word than 'mistake'.

Posted December 13, 2005 6:09 AM by Madeline Kelly

"If the death penalty prevents one murder, then it is unconscionable to refrain from using it. "

No. No no no. A moral argument is not the same as a utilitarian argument. Even if hanging was provably effective in this sense, you could still make a moral argument against it - for example, that it is as wrong for the state to kill, except in immediate necessity, as it is for the individual - which would not be undermined by hanging's proven effectiveness.

It might well save lives if I were to kill my aged grandparents now; I could inherit their money and give it to a vaccination charity, rather than the money being spent on retirement home care for the rest of their lives. But it would not be unconscionable for me not to do so- regardless of the utilitarian benefits, it would still be immoral for me to kill them. (This is, of course, a hypothetical example.)

This reminds me of something that I think came out of Farm Hall - that senior German officers were generally completely incapable of making the distinction between moral and utilitarian decisions. Thus 'it was wrong to invade Poland because it put Germany at war with its natural ally, Britain' rather than 'it was wrong to invade Poland because aggressive war is wrong'. And this has, of course, come up in the torture issue as well.

Posted December 13, 2005 6:36 AM by ajay

Francis: You made a decent argument until the end there....what's up with the extension of the argument? How does removing a murderer from the gene pool correlate with banning firearms or motor vehicles? (It's not that I don't understand what you're trying to say....I do. I simply think it's a silly deduction)

You stated "If the death penalty prevents one murder, then it is unconscionable to refrain from using it."

I simply gave a list of things that make murder easier - and therefore if they were banned could easily prevent more than one murder. Taking any of them away from a person is less serious than taking the life of a person away.

Therefore, because taking them away is less serious than killing people, if it is unconscionable to refrain from using the death penalty, it is unconscionable to leave such objects in peoples' hands.

Posted December 13, 2005 6:39 AM by Francis

"The odds of someone convicted of two separate murders being innocent would be low enough to justify the risk of imposing a death sentence."

why that sure is sensible, we must make sure however that after the first murder we don't put them somewhere that has a higher incidence of murder by several degrees than is found in normal society.

Posted December 13, 2005 6:41 AM by bryan

'I never stated that countries with the death penalty had lower rates of murder than those without. Muder rates depend on many factors.'

okay then, how exactly are you going to prove your case that executing murderers decreases the rate of capital crime. with a big wish?

"If the death penalty prevents one murder, then it is unconscionable to refrain from using it. "
That's a mighty big if then. Is this like an if in a programming language, that the value of variable refrain is set to unconscionable if the function DeathPenaltyPreventsMurder returns True? Otherwise it's highly conscionable?
Because otherwise your statement makes very little sense and deserves to be laughed at, which, now that I think of it, is what I'm sitting here doing.

Posted December 13, 2005 6:49 AM by bryan

No one who purports to be against the death penalty would state the same view if it were their child who had been murdered.

One Christian view of the matter.

Posted December 13, 2005 7:19 AM by chris

I am reminded of The History of Bestiality, the lecture on the history of the death penalty. In short, a long, long chain of insanity and horror, with little to no positive effect on anything.

Posted December 13, 2005 7:39 AM by KristianB

Ted Bundy moved from Washington, a state with no death penalty, to Florida, a state that does have a death penalty.

Posted December 13, 2005 8:44 AM by James D. Macdonald

I should like to note that what decided me on this issue -- flatly against, when in youth I felt that there was perhaps greater humanity in hanging someone than in keeping them locked up alone for decades -- is the case of Guy Paul Morin, where it became obvious that much of the problem is not that the police make mistakes, but rather that they frame people as a matter of casual practice. (This is clearly accepted practice, because those responsible didn't even lose their pensions over it, never mind face criminal charges for, among other things, coercing witnesses.)

The world cannot reliably be divided into guilty and innocent.

Posted December 13, 2005 8:56 AM by Graydon

As fuzzy-headed liberals go, I am pretty fuzzy. I am, in general, highly in favor of the "let them rot for the rest of their natural lives" theory of punishment. I would not like to see a one-time fit-of-passion murderer be executed; the odds are that that was the only person in mortal danger from that source.

But there are some organisms who ought not be allowed to live. Charles Manson, for example. The man's insane, a total looney; he cannot be made sane. If he were given the opportunity, he'd start killing people again. He should be killed, for much the same reason that a rabid animal should be killed.

Yes, I am aware that this leads to questions of who gets to decide what crimes are heinous enough and whether a criminal can be helped. I don't care. The kinds of crimes I'm talking about are so extreme that the odds of having the wrong perpetrator are vanishingly small.

You may all feel free to look down on me now.

Posted December 13, 2005 9:06 AM by Carrie S.

A convict can languish on death row, it seems, almost indefinitely while the legal system grinds through appeals and pleas for clemency.

This, plus the final, dramatic ritual slaying: lends undeserved glamour to murderers; costs the state (i.e. "us") a fortune; randomly postpones closure for the victim's family; and ultimately gives a murderer a clean, quick death (when rotting in a living hell would be so much more fitting).

For these reasons alone, I would oppose the death penalty in the UK.

Posted December 13, 2005 9:06 AM by zornhau

Graydon brings up what was perhaps the key point for me when I decided I was against the death penalty.

Killing people is wrong no matter who does it. But, in addition, if the person is guilty it lets them off the hook. Nobody can decide whether there is an afterlife or whether the condemned is going to heaven, hell, limbo or elsewhere. But a lifetime in a small cell? That, to my mind, is a far greater punishment, where a murderer can reflect on his or her crime(s).

The justice system is faulty. And I suspect that William Lexner is a troll.

Posted December 13, 2005 9:12 AM by Nomie

A friend of mine is part of a company that specializes in DNA analysis for defense attorneys. He has told stories of staggering police-lab incompetence that nearly made me weep (like the guy who was sentenced to life in prison because his DNA sample was the one done right before a murder-scene DNA test, and the lab didn't use clean, sterile equipment on the next run).

Unfortunately, juries have seen too many episodes of CSI, and they believe that every police lab is run by Gil Grissom and his plucky band of excruciatingly-careful top-notch adventure-scientist-cops. When the truth, of course, is that most police labs are run by schleps who just see it as their job.

This, this is why I'm against the death penalty in practice. I agree that some dudes just need killin'. But I don't trust any of the people involved in deciding that.

Posted December 13, 2005 9:25 AM by James Kiley

The long wait on Death Row (where the leading cause of death is natural causes) is not an essential part of the system; in the UK, before we abolished hanging, people were normally executed a few weeks after conviction. The last two people to be hanged in the UK were convicted in June 1964 and hanged in August.
The Let Them Rot theory was recently used by the Filipino justice minister, who pointed out this year that Filipino prisons were so grim that a prison term was actually worse than death; there was therefore no good argument for restoring the death penalty.

Posted December 13, 2005 9:29 AM by ajay

William: "We must trust in our system and work harder at assuring that we never let the innocent be punished. Mistakes do happen in life, and they are lamentable."

So the solution would be: let's ban the capital punishment now, and reinstate it when the system is perfect. Hell, I'd love that. Let's create a third-party review authority that routinely reviews all the murder cases; when the percentage of error goes below an almost-perfection rate (say, 0.1%), we'll talk again. It would also incentive the police to clean up their current (mal)practices.

I come from a country that, after inventing the judicial system itself, now suffers from a massive failure in the area, with thousands of uncelebrated trials, litigations that routinely last decades, corrupt courts, etc... Hence, not much different from yours I dare say :) My experience is that "perfect" Justice doesn't exist, hence a perfect Judgement bringing unrevocable acts will never be possible. We endure the best possible compromise to maintain an efficient society. Your system doesn't acknowledge that, acting under the impression of being a mouthpiece for some divine will -- the only one entitled to dispense life and death.

But you don't really want a rational discussion, because you don't want a judicial system, William. You want a preemptive strike: let's cut the thief's hand now, so he won't steal again. Then, as I didn't pay my taxes correctly last year, you should lock me up right now because I could do the same next year... and the fact that I'm paying back would count for nothing. Given this train of thought, I can stop to pay my dues to society right now, as I'll always be a criminal anyway. In the long run, isn't it better for the State to have a working citizen producing a constant flux of money to help pay for medicare, instead of a false sense of righteousness?

Posted December 13, 2005 9:37 AM by Giacomo

Just a thought: is there an ISO Standard for justice systems?

Posted December 13, 2005 9:41 AM by zornhau

I'm against it no matter what. I see no good purpose in teaching anyone that people ought to be dehumanized, and plenty of evil ones.

Once you go down that road, it becomes easier to decide that lesser offenses can be given the death penalty, depending on how much personal outrage they generate.

Posted December 13, 2005 9:52 AM by Josh Jasper

(You may argue, "ah, but our judicial system is better!" Yes, well, you may indeed do so, but you ought to remember that it's run by the government -- the same people who run the post office. Mistakes happen, and they're a lot commoner than most people think.)

Post Office? Hell, these are the same folks who run FEMA. In fact, all evidence would suggest that the Federal Corrections handbook was swapped with the FEMA handbook shortly before they arrived in New Orleans.

Posted December 13, 2005 9:54 AM by Keith Kisser

I wish I could remember the source for the study I saw that showed, in the U.S., that states with a death penalty in place actually had higher murder rates than those without.

(One could of course argue that it's the higher murder rate that caused the death penalty to be enacted, rather than the death penalty that caused the higher murder rate ... but either way, it doesn't seem to be doing a particularly good job as a deterrent.)

Posted December 13, 2005 10:05 AM by Janni

While I'm at it, a quote I ran into recently (but can't, alas, source) is relevant here.

The purpose of civilisation is to be less unforgiving than nature.

Posted December 13, 2005 10:14 AM by Francis

But there are some organisms who ought not be allowed to live. Charles Manson, for example. The man's insane, a total looney; he cannot be made sane. If he were given the opportunity, he'd start killing people again. He should be killed, for much the same reason that a rabid animal should be killed.

I would think more could be learned b studying him, and not just what irks Mr. Manson. If he is, as you say, loony, than quite a bit about what makes loony folks tick could be learned from analysis and prolonged study (which, as far as I know, he has not received. I may be wrong on this point. For all I know, there could be hoards of psychoanalysts chatting with him daily).

The worth of knowledge that could be gained from Charles Manson’s brain about the human mind is worth far more than the emotional satisfaction of putting down a deranged animal.

Posted December 13, 2005 10:22 AM by Keith Kisser

I don't oppose the death penalty in principle, but I'm forced to oppose it in practice.
There's a class of crime that's so far beyond the pale that these acts aren't committed against individuals, but against Society in general.

I used to believe that mass indiscriminate killing deserved the death penalty. Then cases like the Birminham Six made me realize those are the sort of cases where the desire to find someone to punish is greatest, with punishing someone innocent fitting the system better than punishing no-one.

Posted December 13, 2005 10:27 AM by Alan Braggins

"If the death penalty prevents one murder, then it is unconscionable to refrain from using it."

I am reminded of the answer of the Spartans when informed that if the Persians took the city, they would burn it to the ground, kill every man and sell every woman and child into slavery.

"If".

Posted December 13, 2005 10:27 AM by Dave Luckett

You really need to read the full Jon Carroll column. See http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/12/12/DDGQIF5KV91.DTL

I was really impressed when I read it on SFGate yesterday.

Posted December 13, 2005 10:29 AM by Faren Miller

Bud Welch is a buffoon. Being an idiot is not a crime, unfortunately.

When it comes to earning the right to opine on the matter of whether murderers should face the death penalty, "having your daughter get murdered" utterly pales next to "being some guy on the Internet".

Posted December 13, 2005 10:31 AM by Anticorium

"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

Posted December 13, 2005 10:48 AM by Electric Landlady

juries have seen too many episodes of CSI

Add to that: far too many people seem to think that people are arrested (and tried) because they are guilty. (And those who think that Williams deserved death because he showed no remorse might want to consider that maybe he didn't commit the crimes he was executed for: the evidence was circumstantial. And he was willing to admit to other crimes, so it wasn't that he didn't knnow what he'd done.)

Posted December 13, 2005 10:55 AM by P J Evans

Speaking of criminal justice and unjust convictions, have y'all read the article in New Scientist about firearm forensics being unreliable? The upshot of it is that gunshot residue (GSR) particles can get onto your hands and clothing lots of other ways than firing a gun. Like, say, riding in a police car or visiting a police station.

Posted December 13, 2005 10:56 AM by Avram

Can we have a new, exciting death penalty discussion instead of grinding along the same old rut?

My beliefs on the death penalty are one of the only things I've been able to get down to bumper-sticker length: "Killing people shouldn't make you feel good."

Even if the death penalty wasn't, ever, going to be applied Sacco-and-Vanzetti style [1]. . .

Even if it was going to be applied only to the worst of the worst, the kind of serial killers you see in bad cop movies [2]. . .

Some people had BBQ parties when Ted Bundy was given the chair. Some people have told me that they'd have no problem throwing the switch on a murderer.

Some people shouldn't be encouraged.

[1] The judge said something to the effect of "I fixed those anarchist bastards."
[2] Actual serial killers are far more Buffalo Bill than Hannibal Lecter. Hollywood is lazy.

Posted December 13, 2005 11:01 AM by Sandy

But there are some organisms who ought not be allowed to live. Charles Manson, for example. The man's insane, a total looney; he cannot be made sane. If he were given the opportunity, he'd start killing people again. He should be killed, for much the same reason that a rabid animal should be killed.

Oddly, Manson's my favorite example of why we don't need the death penalty. Even though California didn't even have a "life without parole" sentence when he was convicted, so that he comes up for parole every few years, and his crimes, so sensational and horrifying to those of us old enough to remember in fact largely faded from the public mind, Manson has never even come close to getting out.

We don't need to tread into the dangerous moral ground of arrogating to ourselves the right to decide who "deserves" death; we can simultaneously protect society from murderers and protect ourselves against the crime of executing the wrong person, merely by having an effective system of locking up the murderers.

As for the idea that insanity makes Manson especially worthy of death--no, sorry, that's morally backwards as far as I can see. If he's insane, he doesn't have moral responsibility for his horrible deeds; he's not capable of it. That's what insanity means. We'd be justified in killing him if we had no other effective way to protect ourselves from him, but we manifestly do, and have been doing it for decades.

(Ted Bundy is my niggling area of doubt. I think Bundy, unlike Manson would likely have talked his way out of prison eventually if he hadn't been executed. Unfortunately, I know of no way to ensure that we limit the death penalty to the Ted Bundys of the world--truly guilty AND no other way to protect society from them--and I don't share Mr. Lexner's confidence that God will look kindly on our executions of the innocent and the not-dangerous-again, merely to ensure that we get a few of the Ted Bundys, too.)

Posted December 13, 2005 11:08 AM by Lis Carey

Somehow arguments about murderers and the death penalty always remind me of Robert Sheckley.

About punishing murders committed in prison, what about letting convicted murderers duel each other? If they want to. Let them practice a few times alone in a locked shooting range, they don't come out until the ammo is gone. Then they have their duel and the survivor, if any, goes back to his cell. The winners would get as much chance to bully people as the big guys and sociable ones do now, but each time they actually duelled somebody there would be a reasonable chance they'd lose. A start toward an equalizer. The supposed murderer in a wheelchair might have as much chance to win as the big muscular murderer, though the one with Parkinsons wouldn't.

Refuse a duel and other prisoners might blame you for wimping out. Prisoners who wanted to die would have an easy way. Get some publicity and it might tend to establish dueling as something that criminals do, kind of romantic but very fey. On the other hand a lot of americans are so spiritually vacant that we might start pressing to let people on the outside do it. And of course if you duel someone to the death and kill them, your punishment would be to go to a prison where you could keep doing it....

It's worth more thought but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be a bad idea after all.

Posted December 13, 2005 11:32 AM by J Thomas

A few facts and figures from NCADP, ACLU, HRW, DPIC and AIUSA: There are currently more than 3500 people on death row in the US. Since the reinstatement of capital punishment by the US Supreme Court in 1976, the US has executed 944 individuals. Only 12 States and the District of Columbia do not have death penalty statutes. The UN has resolved that execution of those 18 or younger at the time of the crime is "contrary to customary international law", but at least 20 US states still have laws allowing for the execution of offenders as young as 16. In the past five years, the US has executed 13 juvenile offenders, while the rest of the world has recorded five such killings. Only the US and Somalia have yet to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and in addition to the US only China, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Iran and Pakistan have openly executed juveniles since 2000. Although execution of persons with "substantial intellectual impairment" is now illegal in the US, some 40 retarded people were executed between 1977 and 2002. Despite international law prohibiting execution of the mentally ill, virtually universal adoption of corresponding national laws and strong agreement between these bodies of law and the US Constitution, the US continues to execute the insane, most recently Larry Robison (schizophrenia, 2000), Thomas Provenzano (delusional, 2000) and John Satterwhite (retarded and mentally ill, 2000). Although non-whites make up around a quarter of the US population, they constitute 55% of death row and represent 43% of those executed since 1976. Although whites account for 50% of murder victims, in 80% of capital cases the victim was white. More than 60% of juvenile offender death sentences since 1976 have been passed on Blacks or Latinos. Of all death row inmates, 95% cannot afford an attorney and must rely on underfunded state programs, most of which do not have meaningful competency standards. There is enormous geographic disparity and apparent arbitrariness in the death penalty: state and federal jurisdictions vary in the crimes for which the death penalty can be sought and the likelihood that prosecutors will in fact seek it, so that location is a primary determinant of an offender's chances of facing death and the same crime is likely to receive different punishment in different courts; only about 1% of convicted murderers are executed. The death penalty is expensive, costing between $1 and $7 million per case as opposed to around $500-600,000 per case for life without parole. The death penalty does not appear to be an effective deterrent. Canada's murder rate has dropped 40% since abolition of the death penalty in 1975, whereas the US rate was 6.2/100,000 in 1967, 10.2/100,000 in 1980 and 5.6/100,000 in 2003. The five non-death penalty countries with the highest murder rates average 21.6 murders per 100,000 people, whereas the five death penalty countries with the highest rates average 41.6/100,000. From 1980 to 2000, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty was 48-101% higher than in states without the death penalty, and 10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average.

Finally, and to me most compellingly, the death penalty takes innocent lives. Since 1973, 117 death row inmates have been exonerated, a rate of around one exoneration for every eight executions. A description of each case can be read here; unless I made an error, these inmates spent an average of 8.9 years in prison before being exonerated. This error rate alone should be enough to take death penalty statutes off the books.

Posted December 13, 2005 11:40 AM by sennoma

Having been a fan of the original "CSI" show (the one based in Nevada) since it started showing years ago, and having been on a jury for a murder trial more recently, I can testify that TV and reality are so far apart that "CSI" is technically equivalent to the original "Star Trek" where technology solves all sociological problems in the universe. It was actually quite depressing to see how unlike the TV show that reality actually is.

Posted December 13, 2005 11:45 AM by Greg London

Avram mentions the New Scientist story about firearms residues, and the whole article is worth reading. Part of the issue is quality control on the forensic work.

The actual test involves the detection of minute particles produced by the detonation of the primer and burning of the powder in a cartridge. This is rather different from the sort of firearms residue you'd find Perry Mason arguing about. It's the detection of quantities that are close to the base noise level. And anyone going into a room where a gun has been fired is going to be contaminated.

Shoot the boss and the secretary might be more contaminated than the murderer. But it's forensic evidence and so can be trusted.

Posted December 13, 2005 11:57 AM by Dave Bell

J Thomas, consider handicapping for your case of the dueling prisoner with Parkinson's. The more moble inmate gets a .22 pistol, while the Parkinson's patient gets a grenade launcher.

Makes about as much sense as the current system. And yes I'm feeling a bit cynical after reading Schwartzennegger's letter.

Posted December 13, 2005 12:05 PM by Claude Muncey

Terrific discussion. My own thoughts:

1) If someone I loved - hell, if my dog - was murdered, I would want so badly to maim/hurt/kill the murderer that my hands would tremble with the effort to keep from wrapping around an axe, and my teeth would ache with the effort not to scream with rage;
2) My desire for revenge should not be the foundation for my country's system of justice, though a desire for revenge is surely a motivating factor in the creation of same;
3) I do not trust the state to kill in my name;
4) I believe, in principle and fact, in redemption.

Posted December 13, 2005 12:09 PM by Lizzy L

If anyone is interested in a serious and thoughtful discussion that doesn't fall into the usual ruts, I'd recommend Scott Turow's book Ultimate Punishment. And no, I don't have any financial interest in this book or its author.

but you ought to remember that it's run by the government

And fueled by us, The People. Juries are not hired by the Civil Service. DAs are not elected by the U.S. Senate.

Posted December 13, 2005 12:10 PM by mythago

Keith: The worth of knowledge that could be gained from Charles Manson’s brain about the human mind is worth far more than the emotional satisfaction of putting down a deranged animal.

I agree, but we aren't studying him. Given the choice, which appears to be "have him alive, potentially useful, but unstudied" and "have him dead", I take "dead".

Lis: As for the idea that insanity makes Manson especially worthy of death--no, sorry, that's morally backwards as far as I can see. If he's insane, he doesn't have moral responsibility for his horrible deeds; he's not capable of it.

I don't care whether he's morally responsible. A rabid animal isn't morally responsible either, even if you believe (which I do) that animals can ever be morally responsible. The animal's brain is broken in an unfixable way; that makes it the responsibility of healthy animals to make sure it can't do damage.

I am the first to admit that this is a pragmatic rather than a philosophical view. To put it another way: I'm willing to take the karma of killing a sentient (or having it killed on my behalf) in order to be sure it can't damage people. I don't think killing is good; I think it is sometimes necessary. There's a difference.

We'd be justified in killing him if we had no other effective way to protect ourselves from him, but we manifestly do, and have been doing it for decades.

"Manson [had a parole hearing in 2002 and] was denied early release...due to a "litany" of offenses ranging from drug trafficking to arson to assaulting guards." Earlier in his life, he was in prison and raped another prisoner at knifepoint. (This from the Wikipedia article on the subject, which is obviously not authoritative but appears to be corroborated by other sources.)

So yeah, we're protecting ourselves, unless the selves in question happen to work or be incarcerated in the prison he's in.

J Thomas: About punishing murders committed in prison, what about letting convicted murderers duel each other? If they want to.

I've always kinda liked the idea of letting death row inmates volunteer for life-threatening scientific study, myself. If they survive, their sentence is commuted to life in prison.

But the duelling sounds kinda neat, too.

Posted December 13, 2005 12:16 PM by Carrie S.

Francis: Arthur D. Hlavaty, according to the Commonplaces on the front page of this very blog. But it was "The whole point of having society..." He's the same guy who first used the term 'disemvowel' AFAICT.

The Innocence Project has been doing modern DNA tests on convicted murderers whose convictions relied on the tests available at the time (under certain circumstances which I don't know). Many people have been released from prison, including several from death row.

Nobody's doing these tests for people who've been executed already. You know why? Because the state won't release the evidence. Understandable; think of the wrongful death suits. Think of the public OUTCRY that would happen if we started finding out how many innocent people are being put to death in this country?

Why, people might start voting against the death penalty. And we can't have THAT.

I believe that it is ALWAYS, without exception, wrong to kill a human being. Always. It may on occasion be LESS wrong than the alternative (for example, letting the person in question kill you). Mr. Lexner is living in a fantasy world where there's always a right course of action; there is not. Sometimes you have to play the hand you're dealt and lose as little as possible; unfortunately we're not playing duplicate but rubber, and there's no way to compare after the fact.

What we can do is note our errors, and try to avoid them in the future. We now know that many people have been falsely convicted of capital crimes. We suspect, but the state prevents us from knowing for sure, that many of those people have been executed. What's unconscionable is to continue executing people when we know that's happening.

But a murderer locked in a prison cell is not a case of "it's less wrong to kill him." If he really wants to die, let him kill himself (providing it's a rational decision, which in my opinion it never is). Inmates who want to die have no right to draft us, the people, to execute them.

No civilized nation practices the death penalty. By definition.

Posted December 13, 2005 12:19 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

I think the idea that murderers are somehow monsters, or animals, or something is a dodge.

They are human beings.

Yes, even Manson. Yes, even the guys who torture-murdered Matthew Shepard.

They are human, and those things show what humans are capable of. Beware your fellow humans. Beware yourself. Beware, most of all, the forces in society that cause people to become such "monsters," such "animals."

Using the death penalty is arrogating to ourselves the power of life and death. It's also abrogating a responsibility that does fall to us: to shape our society in such a way that such things do not happen. We're putting out fire after fire, but really making no attempt to arrest the arsonist who lives in the basement of the firehouse.

This is not just a crime. It is a blunder.

Posted December 13, 2005 12:27 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Aha, I have found the news article that the Wikipedia article was quoting. It's here.

Posted December 13, 2005 12:31 PM by Carrie S.

Oh, and: as I said when we were discussing torture a few years ago, if Osama bin Laden fell into my hands, I would take great pleasure in torturing him to death.

That is WHY society must prevent me from being in charge of what happens to him. This is the "what if it was your daughter" argument again; society exists in part to restrain that very understandable impulse.

I wonder if I can draw up legal documents arranging for an amicus curiae brief to be filed on my behalf should I die by murder? The brief would state my opposition to the death penalty for my own case, and "forbidding" the state to compound the murderer's crime by doing further harm to society by executing him. I'll look into it.

Posted December 13, 2005 12:32 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Xopher:I think the idea that murderers are somehow monsters, or animals, or something is a dodge. They are human beings.

Then they're broken human beings. And I would like to state for the record that I don't believe murderers in general are monsters--but some of them are. The fact that they're humans too doesn't make it better.

And yeah, change society such that no more people become monsters; that's a wonderful plan and I am fully behind it.

What are we to do in the meantime? What are we to do if the mere fact of human nature renders such a wonderful thing impossible?

Posted December 13, 2005 12:39 PM by Carrie S.

My point is that they are no less human for doing terrible things. They don't become monsters; they become human beings who have done terrible things. If you think of them as monsters it's easy to think of them as fundamentally different from yourself. They are not. They are as human as you.

Their lives have led them to make terrible choices. Yours has not. What I'm saying is that we need to devote more effort (and money) to prevention. One of the advantages of getting rid of the death penalty is that it would apply pressure in that direction.

Posted December 13, 2005 12:44 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

amen, christopher.

Posted December 13, 2005 12:48 PM by almostinfamous

My main moral problem with the death penalty is not that it kills somebody -- I can see many cases in which killing somebody is justified and even right. My problem is that it is insufficient punishment.

Maybe if I believed more strongly in Hell or something like that, I would feel differently. But I was not brought up in a religion with a defined sense of eternal punishment after death, so getting to die instead of spending your life in, say, solitary confinement in a cold room, with water dripping on your head, seems like a pretty cushy way out. If I had my druthers, we'd keep the worst murderers and criminals of other sorts alive as long as possible, under the most hideous non-lethal conditions possible. When they seemed to be about to die, we would keep them alive as long as possible by any means needed, in a hellish half-life of machine-assisted breathing and eating, while their bodies rotted around them.

I don't want to rely on somebody else's idea of what might happen when the person is dead: I want hell on earth, as much of it as possible.

But I'm kind of vindictive in that way.

Posted December 13, 2005 12:51 PM by Ayse Sercan

Some people had BBQ parties when Ted Bundy was given the chair.

I was in Tallahassee (as a college student) when Bundy was executed. It was quite frightening to see the level of celebration -- restaurants offering fried "Bundy fingers" (chicken strips), etc. It was one of my great social awakenings -- how is someone who celebrates and revels in an execution any better than the murderer?

Posted December 13, 2005 12:58 PM by Darice Moore

If you think of them as monsters it's easy to think of them as fundamentally different from yourself...Their lives have led them to make terrible choices. Yours has not.

They are different from me. The fact that I am fortunate enough to have never been subject to stress that would break me does not change the fact that they're broken. I don't know what kind of stress it would take to do that; I can only be grateful it's never happened to me, and sorry for them as I would be sorry for a mad dog.

What I do know is that there are people who have been in such situations and have not done awful things. There are also people who did whatever they did under circumstances no worse than, say, my high school career, and yet I am not a murderer and they are. To me, this argues strongly that it's not as simple as you seem to suggest.

What I'm saying is that we need to devote more effort (and money) to prevention. One of the advantages of getting rid of the death penalty is that it would apply pressure in that direction.

Again: what are we to do in the interval before mass murderers cease to exist? You may be willing to take the karma of innocents destroyed, but I'm frankly not. I'll grant that incarceration at least keeps the bad guys away from people who aren't paid to deal with them; I'm simply not sure it's enough.

Posted December 13, 2005 1:04 PM by Carrie S.

The problem is that the only crimes I would viscerally deem worthy of the death penalty are crimes that go unpunished in our society. Driving people to poverty, causing their unnecessary death, ordering the torture and killing of whole generations. None of the people guilty of that have been punished, with the possible exception of Saddam Hussein, and mostly because he displeased the wrong people. I would much rather see Pinochet executed than Manson, since Pinochet doesn't have the excuse that he was mad and he killed far more people and caused far more misery.

But, however reluctantly, because I am a civilized being, I would campaing for his reprieve too.

Posted December 13, 2005 1:08 PM by Anna Feruglio Dal Dan

"It was one of my great social awakenings -- how is someone who celebrates and revels in an execution any better than the murderer?"

I'm sorry but: they're better by not having engaged in multiple rapes and murders of women.

I find the celebratory aspects of executions abhorent, except in the case of Bundy.

That said, as I am against the death penalty on different grounds then I suppose most people are I can say that I don't think Bundy should have been executed while at the same time thinking how much I would have loved to stomp that bastard to death.

Posted December 13, 2005 1:10 PM by bryan

Anyone have any thoughts as to why it's such a useful political tactic in the U.S. to one-up a political opponent by supporting ever-harsher penalties for crime? In addition to the death penalty I'm also thinking of California's three strikes law* and the federally mandated minimum sentences for controlled substance violations.

I don't agree with the death penalty, but I can at least sort of see the arguments in favor of it. However, IMHO, some of the other penalties cited above border on the surreal.

All of the most extreme punishments seem to have resulted from political jockeying for a tougher-than-thou stance on crime issues. In the U.S. that wins elections. Does that sort of tactic not play well in, for instance, the U.K.? If not, anyone care to speculate on root causes for the difference?

* For those of you not familiar, this is a California state law that mandates life imprisonment for any third felony conviction, no matter how trivial. Defendants have been sentenced to life imprisonment for offenses as trivial as shoplifting. (There is still a U.S. Supreme court challeng pending, but given the recent shift in the court's makeup I'd be surprised if it went anywhere.)

Posted December 13, 2005 1:23 PM by Scott H

I have very mixed feelings on the death penalty. In principle, I'm opposed, but I know if I could go back in time and kill Hitler or Osama bin Laden, I'd do it.

Tookie Williams was pretty clearly a murderer himself, and while he may have redeemed himself, he killed at least four people and may have incited other murders. Part of me wanted to see him get clemency and part of me didn't.

But there are some number, probably greater than one, of people who are executed who were innocent, And that's unconscionable.

Posted December 13, 2005 1:28 PM by Laurie Mann

Does anyone want to speak to the question of redeemability? It seems as it we have given up on the old Christian concept of redemption. Everyone, according to Christian teaching, is capable of this. In fact, the only person ever to be one-hundred-percent, no-questions-asked redeemed was a convicted thief hanging on a cross: and I say to you, tonight you shall be with Me in paradise.
I'm not a very good Christian; sometimes I'm not one at all, depending on how pissed I am at the current crazy fundie making headlines. But I believe that only God is entitled to declaring a human being unredeemed. Me, I'm too fallible, too emotional, too unkowing.

Posted December 13, 2005 1:39 PM by Emma

mandates life imprisonment for any third felony conviction, no matter how trivial

By definition, isn't any felony non-trivial? If not, then maybe it's time to change what is and what is not a felony.

Posted December 13, 2005 1:48 PM by Ayse Sercan

entitled to declaring a human being unredeemed. Me, I'm too fallible, too emotional, too unkowing.

I for one take some comfort in the knowledge that our culture has, rightly I think, delegated the power of life and death exclusively to those persons with such native intelligence, life experience and foresight that they can be relied upon to exercise it with wisdom and restraint--people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura, and Carl Weathers.

Posted December 13, 2005 1:54 PM by Scott H

I wonder what Gray Davis would have done in the case of Williams.

Posted December 13, 2005 2:01 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

It seems as if we have given up on the old Christian concept of redemption.

I'm not a Christian, but I do believe that in theory anyone can be redeemed.

In practice, however, IMO the problem is that there are too many cases of people saying, "I'm sorry, I'll never do it again," and then doing it again.

How do you know when somebody really is redeemed?

Posted December 13, 2005 2:03 PM by Laura Roberts

Scott H:All of the most extreme punishments seem to have resulted from political jockeying for a tougher-than-thou stance on crime issues. In the U.S. that wins elections. Does that sort of tactic not play well in, for instance, the U.K.? If not, anyone care to speculate on root causes for the difference?

In the UK 'Tougher-than-thou' stances are frequently used by politicians, although the compartmentalised structure of british politics means that grandstanding on this topic is mostly from the Home Secretary and his/her Shadow and sometimes the PM and Leader of the Opposition rather than something every candidate jumps into the debate on.

"tough on crime" is something that plays well with the british electorate, or at least certain sections of it. It certainly plays well with the majority of newspaper editors. It's very much a part of 'dog-whistle politics'.

But studies show that crime (and punishment) is never as high up the the list of issues on which british voters decide how to vote as health or education. It's kind of a regular bronze medalist.

Specifically on the death penalty, polls have often shown that large numbers (sometimes amounting to a majority) of the british public are in favour of it. (I'm not convinvced that these polls are accurate, it's an easy issue on which to squew the results with the phrasing of the question or preceding questions or statements which then aren't published.)

But a broad, strong consensus amoung british politicians is very against the death penalty. Once every few years an ambitous MP desperate for media attention might suggest that, maybe, it could be looked at that, the death penalty might be brought back for child molesters who kill their victims (for example). Politicians who make such comments are then dismissed as cynical attention-seekers.

Having worked in politics, i believe this consenus is due to those in political office, knowing how stressful (and sometimes corrupting) it is to make decisions that effect people's lives, understanding that it is wrong to have the power to decide that someone should die.

Posted December 13, 2005 2:20 PM by Aboulic

All of the most extreme punishments seem to have resulted from political jockeying for a tougher-than-thou stance on crime issues. In the U.S. that wins elections. Does that sort of tactic not play well in, for instance, the U.K.? If not, anyone care to speculate on root causes for the difference?

I'm not really able to answer this, but it seems to me that there *is* an established rhetoric in the UK of being "tough on crime", but it falls far short of the toughness you would get in the US. And even then, there seems to be little tolerance for too much of a departure from the centre. David Blunkett, when he was Home Secretary, was vilified for claiming to have celebrated when a serial killer (Harold Shipman) died in jail.

I don't know why. Possibly it's because the UK population genuinely is more centrist than in the US. Or perhaps the media is less inclined to cater to the extremes. Of course, if those things are true then there is presumably some underlying cause which *makes* them true.

I wonder if it is because any call for the death penalty to be restored immediately gets rephrased as "bring back hanging". This is a usefully vivid image of what the death penalty actually involves - it's not quite the level of euphemism we're mostly using even here - and it's a reminder that we abolished it once before and to bring it back would be a regression.

The last man to be hanged in Britain (James Hanratty) was hanged in my home town. Needless to say, there have since been plenty of doubts about his conviction. The circumstances of the case seem to leave no possibility that he was guilty; but a recent DNA test apparently confirmed it. I don't like the fact that this pretty much requires me to believe that the DNA test was flawed.

Posted December 13, 2005 2:35 PM by candle

I try to live a Christian life, and firmly believe that people are only redeemable before God, and we mere humans have too many fallibilities floating around in our systems. We can forgive only if we want to forgive. When it comes down to being victims of someone else's crimes against others, it's easy to talk like this. At the very least, we should try to fogive, but grant redeemability on someone? I'm not sure about this one; most likely this is out of our mortal hands.

Posted December 13, 2005 2:37 PM by John

Oops, didn't refresh in time to see Aboulic's comment.

Having worked in politics, i believe this consenus is due to those in political office, knowing how stressful (and sometimes corrupting) it is to make decisions that effect people's lives, understanding that it is wrong to have the power to decide that someone should die.

I'm not sure why this should be confined to the UK, though, if it exists even there.

Posted December 13, 2005 2:37 PM by candle

Xopher said: "I believe that it is ALWAYS, without exception, wrong to kill a human being."

This is the most ludicrous comment imaginable. I could list a few thousand examples of instances where one would have the moral obligation to take anothers life, but anyone who would spew such inane rubbish is certainly not going to thoughtfully consider reality.

A society does not exist to have a higher idealism than the individual. A society exists only to protect it's citizenry. (This is the reason we banded together in the first place.... for protection) As such, our first obligation is always to protect our citizenry from all threats, foreign and domestic.

As for the woman who called me a troll.... sometimes I think everyone must be out of their minds or posing as some bullshit humanist, because sane human beings could not possibly believe what is being spouted.... but I try to accept that these are genuine feelings.

I'd appreciate it if you'd do the same.

Posted December 13, 2005 2:38 PM by William Lexner

A society exists only to protect it's citizenry.

I believe the point has been made that a society does not have to have institutionalised murder in order to protect its citizenry.

sometimes I think everyone must be out of their minds... because sane human beings could not possibly believe what is being spouted

I often think that very thing, but I suspect that I don't apply it to the same people that you do.

Posted December 13, 2005 2:42 PM by Hamadryad

Listening to interviews in the days leading up to Williams's execution I was particularly troubled by people who said that he had to be executed so that the families of his victims would have closure. Say what?

I am of the you-touch-someone-I-love-and-I-want-you-dead-now-at-my-hands-lingeringly school, which is why I want a government which protects me from my entirely understandable impulses in that matter. But that's the rage talking; I don't think I'd feel any satisfaction at his death because that death has nothing to do with what I'm missing. Someone rapes and murders my beautiful nine-year-old-daughter, and killing him is somehow going to wipe the slate clean? Fill the hole left by her absence, or erase my fear and anger when I wonder what her last moments were like? I can't imagine anything that would do that--certainly not killing another human being.

Saying that executing a criminal will give the victim's families closure strikes me as being close to telling someone who has miscarried that she can always have another child: it simply misses the point.

Posted December 13, 2005 2:44 PM by Madeleine Robins

You're not paying attention, William. And you're living in a fantasy world where there's a right choice in every case.

But someone who "spews the kind of inane rubbish" you began with is "not going to thoughtfully consider reality."

In case you are (because like all humans I am fallible), I refer you back to my comment, where I said that killing another human being might be LESS wrong than the alternative. That is to say, people have a moral obligation (as you put it) to make the best choices they can, even when all the possible choices involve doing SOMETHING wrong.

And if you don't want to be thought of as a troll, you might want to take a more civil tone.

If you decide to do that, I'd be interested in either a) your admission that you misread me (being fallible yourself) or b) your example where it's RIGHT to take the life of another person...as opposed to simply the LEAST WRONG of the alternatives. I believe that the latter describes all cases where it isn't the wrong CHOICE, but if you give me a counterexample I may change my opinion.

Posted December 13, 2005 2:54 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Then they're broken human beings. And I would like to state for the record that I don't believe murderers in general are monsters--but some of them are. The fact that they're humans too doesn't make it better.

I'm rather disturbed by the fact that you think you can tell the difference between a human and a monster, simply by eyeballing a shopping list of their most heinous mistakes. Or that you think you can even make a distinction between the two at all.

That you are not a lone in this is of course the problem we're facing in regards to torture and civil rights in this country. I’m glad you and George W. have the same unflappable moral compass, though I suspect if the tables were turned and someone labeled you a monster and came to place the noose around your neck (or export you to Cuba so someone else could do it), you'd feel differently.

Posted December 13, 2005 2:55 PM by Keith Kisser

All of the most extreme punishments seem to have resulted from political jockeying for a tougher-than-thou stance on crime issues. In the U.S. that wins elections. Does that sort of tactic not play well in, for instance, the U.K.? If not, anyone care to speculate on root causes for the difference?

I'd like to think that it's because there's enough institutional memory here in the UK to recall the 18th century when you could be hanged for stealing a loaf of bread. However, given that we have a Prime Minister who is "Tough on crime; tough on the causes of crime" which seems to equate to "fill the prisons up and slap an asbo on anyone who ticks off their neighbour" perhaps it's only a matter of time.

Posted December 13, 2005 2:59 PM by NelC

I think Keith is being a little vehement, but it's an interesting point. Broken things should be repaired, not discarded. At least if they're as valuable as human beings.

If Williams had been executed within months of conviction, a LOT more kids would have died in gang violence. It's impossible to know what would have happened had Ahnuld granted him clemency, but I know what I think.

Posted December 13, 2005 3:00 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

I'm against the death penalty for a number of reasons, some of them moral, some of them practical, some of them fuzzy-headed liberal, and others purely vindictive.

Broken down, those reasons are:

1. Cost. It costs less to warehouse criminals than to kill them. Ergo, I'd like to see the savings put into social programs against poverty, drugs, domestic violence, etc., which attack the sources of what might make a person want to kill.

2. Aggrandizement of the Death Row inmate. The sensationalism that swirls around murderers, particularly mass or multiple murderers, gives them more attention than I think they're worth. Also, fame attracts copycats; it doesn't discourage them. To relate this to what other people are talking about: Canadian child killer Clifford Olson has said that part of his motivation for killing as often as he did was that he admired Ted Bundy and wanted to surpass his body count.

Leaving aside the fact that Canada doesn't have a death penalty... ow. Some discouragement, all you death penalty advocates out there.

3. Dead people are less useful than live people. People doing life in prison have the chance to reform. Failing that, they are more useful being part of the economy (prison workshops make license plates, furniture, etc.) than they are pushing up daisies. Tookie Williams wrote anti-gang children's books; whether he was 'reformed' or not, at the least, he was making an effort to prevent other people from following his path.

Additionally, warehoused criminals form a pool of knowledge that our police elements can tap for either current information or for more abstract studies such as behavioral profiles. The latter have provided tools to police forces in the identification and entrapment of other killers; I have no trouble imagining that further study of these types of people may lead to ways and means of catching them earlier and earlier in their careers, and possibly, even to methods of intervening with them before they kill. This may have already happened; there is a case of a woman who was stalked by a man. She went to the police, who identified him as the type who would eventually kill her, and they intervened. (Exact details--names, dates, locations--escape me at the moment, and my references are at home.)

If true, this means that all of those living murderers have helped to save an innocent life. Ergo, it was worthwhile keeping them alive. Doing otherwise would be unconscionable, to use the word of the moment.

4. Redemption. Yes, I believe redemption is possible. I don't know how likely it is, but I do think it exists. Novelist Anne Perry is a convicted murderer; one could argue she's been redeemed (tho' one's personal opinion might be biased by what one thinks of her prose.)

5. Innocence. There is the matter of innocent people being convicted and executed. If it is wrong to kill an innocent, it is just as wrong to kill an innocent even if you think he/she is guilty. Recall, it's cheaper to warehouse criminals; nothing is lost by keeping people alive to have their evidence retested by better technology. Nothing, that is, but one's opportunity to enjoy righteous vengeance.

Don't get me started on what I think of decisions made under the shadow of 'righteous vengeance'. Any such explaination would get me disemvoweled, and I'd deserve it.

****

Incidently, Charles Manson never murdered anybody. His followers did all the dirty work. He was convicted of making them murder for him.

He's also been studied, several times. Apparently, he's a difficult interview; he spends most of his time trying very hard to convince the interviewers that he's BIG BAD NASTY!!! Very manipulative, very narcissistic, very much someone you don't want out on the street ever again. I don't think anyone is unclear on THAT, at least.

Posted December 13, 2005 3:02 PM by Renee

Laura asked: How do you know when somebody really is redeemed?

You don't. However, if redemption for crimes one has committed in this life is possible in this life, then we should think twice, even a thousand times, about allowing the state to kill to keep us safe IF IT ISN'T NECESSARY. Lock them up for the rest of their lives, so they can't get out and hurt other people, including people in prison with them.

I agree, generally, with what Xopher said about naming people as monsters, i.e. not human. Once you allow one set of people to be defined as "not human" then you legitimate a process in which others (people with mental illnesses, people with physical diabilities, Jews, gypsies, you all know where I'm going with this) may be so defined. [I say, I agree generally because, having a good imagination, I believe that sometimes, someone is born who is indeed a monster. How would I know? Don't know. Would I want a monster to die for his/her crimes? Not sure.]

Lock them up.

All the arguments about the fallibilities of the criminal justice system (mistaken identification, witnesses with something to gain or an axe to grind, institutional racism, prosecutors who want a conviction no matter what, etc) have already been made, so I won't repeat them.

Posted December 13, 2005 3:06 PM by Lizzy L

Carrie S. said: They are different from me.

This may be drawing a long bow, but that sentence leapt out at me as a paradigmatic justification for treating just about anyone badly. Different skin colour, different gender, different religion, different degree of physical capability, different age: all at one time or another have been widely accepted justification for killing or at least severely damaging people. I wonder, Carrie, if your assertion of such radical difference in this case is based on direct experience.

Posted December 13, 2005 3:38 PM by Jonathan Shaw

I didn't intend to come off as vehement.

But pretending to have (or even insinuating that such a thing exists as) a complete and infallible map of the human mind is the sort of hubris that raises the hairs on the back of my neck and makes me want to spit.

Once again, it all comes down to the golden rule.

Posted December 13, 2005 3:38 PM by Keith Kisser

My two cents worth on the recent California execution are here.

I'm suspicious that, for the people who make the law, the issues around the death penalty are primarily economic and political, not moral. The economics and politics hide behind a "safety" smokescreen that exploits highly-charged emotions. I have my own highly-charged emotions: I don't believe that capital punishment makes me any safer, and I don't want to deal with a killer by becoming a killer, myself.

Posted December 13, 2005 3:42 PM by Lenny Bailes

William, people are probably accusing you of being a troll because you're acting like one. Your first post here was a raw appeal to emotion. In your later posts, you've been dismissive of other people's arguments, as well as outright insulting, while you have yet to make a reason-based defense of your own argument.

Posted December 13, 2005 3:45 PM by Avram

WL: "This is the most ludicrous comment imaginable. "

What a limited imagination you must have. Comes from not trying to consider the other side of arguments, I suspect.

Renee: I don't like to argue cost as a factor in capital punishment. If it became cheaper for the government to kill people than keep them alive, would that change your mind?

Posted December 13, 2005 3:48 PM by Sandy

As for the woman who called me a troll.... sometimes I think everyone must be out of their minds or posing as some bullshit humanist, because sane human beings could not possibly believe what is being spouted.... but I try to accept that these are genuine feelings.

I'd appreciate it if you'd do the same.

Goodness. William Lexner is not merely a troll...he's a really good troll.

Posted December 13, 2005 4:00 PM by Heresiarch

Keith,

Xopher wasn't saying that he "can tell the difference between a human and a monster, simply by eyeballing a shopping list of their most heinous mistakes." He was saying that we're all human, including those of us who are murderers, even those who are so extreme that they could be called monsters. Your interpretation of what he was saying goes off in the wrong direction from there.

Posted December 13, 2005 4:04 PM by Jeffrey Smith

Sandy wrote: I don't like to argue cost as a factor in capital punishment. If it became cheaper for the government to kill people than keep them alive, would that change your mind?

No. For me, the most important use for live criminals is their contributions as data points to behavioral studies. For me, advancement of science outweighs any consideration of monetary cost.

Making it cheaper to keep 'em alive is gravy, though.

Posted December 13, 2005 4:06 PM by Renee