Written by Tonight I ran across this Time Magazine essay about the Death Penalty, and how we are entering a new period of national debate on the topic. While city council has no say on this topic, it is a topic of interest to many Washington citizens, and could become a subject for our state legislators to take up again sooner than we may realize.
While I have never lobbied for or against the death penalty, in recent years I generally prefer the life without parole option for murderers. I think capital punishment is becoming too arbitrary. (A couple examples that come to mind: (1) Washington’s worst killer ever, who coldly and randomly raped and killed around 48-50 girls and women, did not receive a death sentence;(2) one man who was scheduled for hanging ate too much junk food and became too heavy to be hung, and died later of natural causes instead). And DNA reversals are so common now it’s sickening to think about who may have been killed erroneously across our nation in years past. (Just yesterday a man was released from prison in Texas after serving 27 years for a crime he did not commit, and not long ago an innocent man was released who had been on death row). With life-without-parole, we may take someone’s liberty, but we can give that back to them, and at least try to help them get their life back if later evidence or science shows we have made a mistake. And in terms of closure, the death penalty takes so long to administer that it keeps victims in legal limbo for up to 20 years or more. It’s better to find closure when the judge’s gavel strikes, and the killer is sentenced to life without parole. Victims should be afforded the opportunity to start their final grieving, coming to terms, and rebuilding at this point. I don’t think we should encourage them to wait for the execution which may never come.
What do you all think?
I’m not sure anymore….
I’m torn – sometimes death seems to easy. This is really one of those issues where both sides are “right.” Murderers *should* perish. Innocent people need the hope of redemption.
What strikes me is in a lot of the mistaken conviction cases – the given public defense attorney sucked, usually really badly. Really badly. Sometimes stupidity and joblessness has a price.
For lesser criminals, what I would like to see, is that convicted violent offenders never get conjugal visits – but at the same time, we also need to get rid of “prison rape” problem as well. Prison should be solitary misery, but not a living hell.
I oppose the death penalty, for all the reasons you mentioned (especially the DNS reversals), plus others. I’d probably have a different opinion if I had a loved one who’d been murdered, but then again, I don’t believe such matters should be decided by emotion. On purely an economic level, it’s far less expensive to incarcerate a killer for life than it is to pay for his or her appeals, and it’s just not realistic to expect the appellate process to go away or be curtailed. You can’t curtail someone’s ability to fight their death sentence, no matter how guilty they might be. So, those who say, “it’s expensive because of the appeals” are correct, but that’s not going to change.
The other compelling argument (for me) against the death penalty is that the US is the only western nation where capital punishment is still practiced. We’re joined on the list of executing nations by the likes of Iran, China, Cuba, and Indonesia. That’s pretty sobering, especially when one considers that countries like Ukraine, Serbia, Haiti, and even Russia no longer execute people. What exactly makes the United States so unique that we need to execute criminals? I understand that we have our own culture of law and order, but I have never heard an argument in favor of the death penalty that truly explains why it’s necessary in our country. The statistics on whether the death penalty serves as a deterrent can be twisted to support any claim. In New York, the number of homicides dropped when the death penalty was reinstated. However, during the same period, the murder rate also dropped in Massachusetts, where there is no death penalty. The only undeniable evidence about the death penalty is that states without it have consistently lower murder rates. Check it out: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=12&did=168#stateswithvwithout
In my opinion, the primary reason why we’ve seen a resurgence of executions in the US in the past several decades is due to the growth of the Religious Right since the early ’80s, and their focus on Old Testament “eye for an eye” methods of justice.
And my feelings about the issue have nothing to do with sympathy for convicted criminals (unless, of course, they’re wrongly convicted). I believe that “life in prison without the possibility of parole” should be reserved for the most hardcore murderers deemed to be incorrigible, and that such a sentence should not come with any extra perks like TV, visitation, or recreation.
Try em, fry em….
I have to agree
***I oppose the death penalty, for all the reasons you mentioned (especially the DNS reversals)***
That man in tx for 27 years, that just makes me sick,someone should be punished for HIM having to sit in there that long for no reason. I heard a man on the radio the other day say ” Look if I grabbed a man hide him in my basement for 27 years then let him go, I’d be put in jail.”
The jail system is messed up, part the reason you have to wonder they have the death penalty is to make room, get rid of people.We need to stop throwing people in jail over stupid things that can be treated elsewhere(drug treatment, mental hospitals, therapy ect), and keep the jails for the ones that really belong there.Then there wouldn’t be any issue in keeping one’s there for life that have committed murder if the jails weren’t so crowded up.
Not directly addressing the issue, but I’d highly recommend Grisham’s new-ish book, The Innocent Man. I just finished it — fascinating read.