Case for death doesn't hold up

Case for death doesn't hold up

By Taylor Mattis
Posted January 8 2007

The arguments in favor of capital punishment fail on factual and moral bases. The most common arguments are:

Deterrence: Capital punishment does not deter the commission of crimes for which it is imposed. (It might deter littering, overtime parking, and probably shoplifting, if it were imposed with certainty and quickly after the crime. Even for petty, deliberate crimes, however, it is doubtful that deterrence is served. In old England where hanging was the penalty for pickpockets, the incidence of pickpocketing was high at the hangings.) The murder rates in states with no capital punishment have not risen since it was abolished. Murder is usually not a planned event as to which one would think: "I'd kill her but for my fear of lethal injection."

The deterrence argument often adds: "Well, at least the criminal whom the state kills would not do it again." True, but surely society could establish and enforce life imprisonment without possibility of parole if we had the will. But why should taxpayers pay to house and feed these bad people for life?

Costs of life imprisonment: Statistics show that taxpayers pay more per capital punishment than for life imprisonment. Yet isn't that because we allow so many appeals (too much due process) before we kill the convicted person? If we were willing to carry out the judgment immediately, or soon after, its imposition, the costs of further judicial review would be slashed. But we are not quite willing to do that because we so often get it wrong. In Illinois the death penalty was suspended after it was established that about half of the persons on death row were innocent of the crime for which they had been convicted. (Not that some "technical, constitutional" error had occurred, but they didn't do the crime. In baseball a batting average of .500 is pretty good; not so good an average for punishing the right person.) The validity of the next argument for capital punishment --revenge-- also depends upon getting the right person, otherwise the real culprit is unpunished.

Revenge: This argument was well articulated by the founder of a victims' advocacy group, who commented on the botched execution of Angel Diaz: "So what? It took an extra few minutes to die." (South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 6A, Dec. 16, 2006.)

The revenge argument holds up well factually -- there is indeed a widespread, felt need to see one suffer for inflicting much pain on others. The argument fails on moral grounds. It appeals to a base instinct of human nature that society should discourage, not feed.

Bible believers might heed the admonition of Paul: "[A]venge not yourselves ? for it is written, vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

Taylor Mattis is an attorney in Fort Lauderdale.