Reply #25: my thoughts [View All]

[Deep13]

"1 - the death penalty violates the right to life."

I doubt that the USA is a signature of anything that outlaws the death penalty. For that matter, I doubt China, Russia or most Middle-Eastern countries are either.

2 - the death penalty is a cruel and inhuman death.

What death isn't? Yeah, it's wrong to torture people. Still, that does not mean it has to be free from discomfort. This all comes down to means of execution and many of them are torturous. I don't think life in prison is any less cruel.

3 - the death penalty has no dissuasive effect.

That's probably true, especially if it takes years to execute.

4 - the death penalty is premeditated murder, demeans the state and makes society more violent.

It may be that it does justify violence. Of course dragging someone off to prison for years isn't much less violent. Neither is eviction from ones home or loss of ones income. The fact is society is full of violence. We by and large just don't see it. Consider our sports or media entertainment. On some level violence seems to be part of what makes us human, especially for men.

It is not murder. By definition, murder is unlawful. The writer is assuming a moral equivalence between murder and execution without justifying it. This is a logical error called fallacy of equivocation, where one uses a word with multiple meaning to draw a false equivalency.

5 - the death penalty is discriminatory in its application.

Yes. The 14th Amendment requires equal protection of the laws. This is violated on an hourly basis in the criminal justice system. Every time a cop pulls over a Black driver for something he would have let slide for a white driver, equal protection is violated. Every time a Latino waits an hour for a police car where a white person would have waited five minutes, an equal protection violation occurred. In this DA's office, I am aware of a time when the police tried to stonewall (sorry for the word choice) the investigation of a gay-on-gay crime. (Our DA insisted that the case be fully investigated.)

In a system that executes more Blacks than whites in a country where only one in ten are Black, it is impossible not to see it as unconstitutional discrimination.

6 - the death penalty denies the capacity of people to mend their ways and become a better person.

Repentance as a virtue comes from Christian theology. It is the idea that anyone can be redeemed (a pawn-broker's term) from sin by confessing and accepting god. I wonder if this doctrine has done more harm than good as it pressures victims to forgive their abusers and to act like it never happened. I personally have been on the receiving end of that crap from my mother regarding one of her ex-husbands.

Frankly, a criminal penalty is about what a defendant did, not what he might do in the future. It is about his actions and not about his soul or whatever.

7 - the death penalty cannot provide social stability nor bring peace to the victims.

That's true. And after the defendant is executed, victims often note that they still don't have "closure" for the reasons mentioned here.

8 - the death penalty denies the fallibility of human institutions.

True. I think in most people's minds, this is the biggest objection to the DP. Of course the same thing can be said for crimes generally and no crime has as much due process as a capital offense. So this is really a criticism of our whole system, and a correct one too.

9 - the death penalty is a collective punishment.

True. So is prison, but not to the same degree.

10 - the death penalty goes against the religious and humanist values that are common to all humanity.

Now that is a lot of nonsense. Read the Bible sometime. There are lists of crimes and non-crimes that demand the death sentence in response. All of the Big Three Abrahamic religions not only allow the DP, but demand it. And I'm sure they are not the only religions to do so.

And the instinct to cast out or kill someone who does something horrible is fundamental to our nature.