Nebraska has voted to ban the death penalty. This makes a lot of sense. The death penalty is cruel and unusual, it is irreversible, it is much more expensive than life in prison, and there is no particular evidence it deters crime.
Blackstone suggested that it is better that 10 guilty go free than one innocent be punished, and several of the founders expressed the same opinion. It turns out that that's pretty close to the rate of erroneous convictions. The Illinois Innocence Project exonerated 11% of death row inmates when DNA evidence became available. Other similar studies have found different numbers--few lower than 6%. Through incompetent defense, irresponsible prosecution, misuse and misinterpretation of evidence, and more, the criminal justice system is imperfect. It's the best we've figured out, but it makes enough mistakes that we should not resort to irreversible punishments.
Justice Blackman, when he was retiring, stated that he was opposed to the death penalty as a violation of the 8th amendment. It cannot, he said, be applied fairly in this society with various forms of discrimination.
Over the years, the method used has changed. During my lifetime, it switched from the electric chair, then to the gas chamber, and then finally lethal injection. Before that, hanging, decapitation and firing squads were used, among others. Each switch was made because previous methods were deemed to be cruel and painful. Lethal injection uses a sequence of drugs--one to render the subject unconscious, and then further drugs to kill them. The doctors of the world have decided that they are firmly against the death penalty and have banned doctors from administering lethal injections...and have pressed the pharmaceutical companies of the world to stop providing the required drugs to anyone who might use them this way. The botched lethal injections we've seen recently have been the result of medical amateurs using drugs that were not designed for the purpose they were being used.
Many people argue that capital punishment is more economical than life in prison. Not True! Because of all the necessary legal processing, capital punishment is as much as ten times as expensive as life in prison.
There is no particular evidence that the death penalty deters crimes. The deterrence effect only works if you're thinking rationally and suspect you might be caught. Killers either aren't thinking rationally or they are being very careful and don't think they will be caught--think of a mob hit man.
The one real thing that the ultimate penalty does is give some finality and retribution to the victim and their families. That's small consolation for the thousands who have been wrongly executed. The urge to vengeance is very destructive. Jesus himself spoke to this subject. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord. Not you or me and not the courts. Only god.
The goals of our penal system should be: #1: to get dangerous people out of society. #2: to deter crime. #3: to rehabilitate those who can be. Life in prison does this without the irreversibility of the death penalty.
I think there's one situation in which capital punishment is acceptable: When the criminal themselves want it. This is uncommon, but not at all unheard of. Gary Gilmore, Ted Bundy, and several others have concluded that their lives were not worth living. I am opposed to suicide for someone who is simply depressed, but if a person is objectively in a situation where their life is irretrievably no longer worth living, euthanasia is the most humane solution. This is appropriate for people with terminal diseases that kill slowly and painfully. And this is appropriate where the convict agrees that they did the deed and there is no possibility of them living a life outside of prison. Of course we should do it in the most humane way practical--unless the convict, as did Gary Gilmore, wants something more dramatic.
addenda 10 June 2015
Scalia's perfect capital punishment case-falls apart
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