Posted by
Andrews on Tuesday, January 15, 2008 9:59:25 AM
It seems the death penalty has come up again and again recently, and every time I read an article, I am struck by one glaring omission. Everyone on either side, those supporting and those opposed to the death penalty, seem to agree that it is "compassionate" to let murders live. But I have yet to see a writer raise the point that it is quite compassionate to put someone to death.
How?
First, let us agree that there is simply no such thing as "life without parole". We may want to believe there is, but, like anything made by man, the prison system can be undone by man. Yes, today's "law and order" legislature may pass a "life without parole" statute, but next year's legislature may be pressured to repeal that law, or to "reinterpret" it to mean a fixed term of X years. Even if the legislature doesn't gut the law, the courts can decide the law needs to be reinterpreted, or can rule that prison crowding requires freeing of a certain number of felons. So, no matter how much we may want to believe there is "life without parole", such a beast does not exist.
Second, even if we could create an ironclad, judge-proof life sentence there is always escape. No prison has been built from which man cannot escape, given enough time and determination. And prisoners have nothing but time. All it takes is a little determination and a bit of creativity and a prisoner may be loose among us once again.
So what does this have to do with compassion? Well, these are murderers we are speaking about. Those who are sentenced to death are usually those we consider the worst, those who commit premeditated murder, or murder while committing other crimes, or murder police officers, those, in short, we consider unlikely to ever reform*. Should they escape, what is their likely course of action? Why, murdering, of course! The logic of the death penalty is that these people are so likely to murder again that we need to put them down**.
Which means letting these beasts out on the streets is effectively sentencing more innocents to death. And to my thinking, that is not compassionate. Yes, maybe there is some compassion in letting a murderer live, but I think there is more compassion in preventing that same murderer from killing any more people. And if the choice is between letting the killer live and preventing the murder of innocents, I will always side with the innocents.
Nor is escape the only possibility. There is also the question of what these men (and women) do in prison. We can agree that not all prisoners are equally bad, and that one does not deserve to die just because one was sent to prison. However, by keeping these murderers alive, we do increase that very possibility. If they were prone to murder outside of prison, there is no reason to think they are any less likely to murder in prison, so by keeping them alive, we are increasing the probability they will murder their fellow prisoners. And not just prisoners, but guards are at risk too.
In short, while it is nice to go on about how "compassionate" it is to give murderers "a second chance" and let them live, it seems to me much more compassionate to protect the rest of the world from these men who have proven themselves to have absolutely no respect for human life.
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* I have never understood why 1st degree and 2d degree murder are defined the way they are. In Maryland, in general, first degree is premeditated murder and 2d degree is murder committed in the heat of passion. To my mind, excluding professional killers, the 1st degree murderer is LESS likely to offend again. Someone who kills for insurance money, or to remove a hated relative, is not likely to go about murdering people. On the other hand, someone who gets so angry they kill people seems a GREATER threat to my mind. So it seems 2d degree murder should actually carry the greater penalty. Perhaps that sort of thinking is why I dropped out of law school, as common sense and law are mostly unrelated.
** I know there is also an argument that the death penalty serves a deterrent function. However, since the opponents always trot out the story about pickpockets working the crowd at hangings, I don't want to bother with that one. I think there is more of a deterrent than the opponents are willing to admit, but we don't even need to consider such matters for my present argument. Thus, for my purposes, I will just argue that the death penalty prevents the present killer from ever offending again.