Writer's Block: Capital offense
Jul. 16th, 2010 03:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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It's a barbaric ritual that's been stripped of any social or religious worth it might once have had. In cultures where it was explicitly sacrificial, perhaps there was a redemptive element (of course, Christianity took that and ran with it), but now it's completely meaningless. It doesn't prevent crimes of passion - anyone who kills someone in a fit of jealousy or rage isn't thinking about the consequences at all, so whether those consequences are a lifetime of incarceration, twenty years' incarceration followed by lethal injection, or immediate death by firing squad are irrelevant. Anyone who commits a premeditated capital crime obviously doesn't think they're going to be caught, so I have a hard time seeing much of a deterrent effect there, either. It's just as expensive as incarcerating someone for life, once the appeals are factored in. And we've seen far too many cases where the police got the wrong man, tried him, and got a conviction and a death sentence based on "well, he was a crook, and he was near there at the time." Our justice system is neither accurate enough nor precise enough for us to apply the most basic of penalties; how is playing with someone's life just?
Given that I generally accept killing a sophont as justified only in cases of self-defense or defense of others' lives, the only cases where I can see killing a prisoner as an appropriate act of the law are the ones in which there is simply no other way to keep them from murdering again. And the leeway that officers of the law already have to use lethal force seems to cover that adequately. For there to be a mechanism by which a person who is not even struggling to escape is snuffed out by a mechanism of the legal system is, frankly, completely inexcusable.
Then there's the issue of court-appointed defense attorneys failing to actually defend the accused in capital trials - especially when the defendant is a minority, uneducated, with a prior criminal record. As if being capable of petty burglary were the same thing as being capable of murder, or not having enough money to hire your own lawyer were a hanging offense in its own right. And that other working-class people seem to see this as a racial issue rather than a class issue bothers me - yes, it's more likely to happen to minorities, but it happens to poor white men who are falsely accused, too. Anyone who has to rely on the courts for their defense is not immune to this treatment. I wouldn't support the death penalty even if the justice system were perfect, but I think its proven near-incompetence in this area is a strong enough argument against it by itself.
I'm not a single-issue voter on this particular issue, but given a choice, yes, I will vote against someone who actively supports the death penalty, especially if they seem to think that its current application is fair. And yes, by the way, I do judge the bloody-minded rabble who clamor for the death penalty to be just as guilty of murder as the technician who slips in the needle.
In closing, let's let Mr. Costello weigh in:
It's a barbaric ritual that's been stripped of any social or religious worth it might once have had. In cultures where it was explicitly sacrificial, perhaps there was a redemptive element (of course, Christianity took that and ran with it), but now it's completely meaningless. It doesn't prevent crimes of passion - anyone who kills someone in a fit of jealousy or rage isn't thinking about the consequences at all, so whether those consequences are a lifetime of incarceration, twenty years' incarceration followed by lethal injection, or immediate death by firing squad are irrelevant. Anyone who commits a premeditated capital crime obviously doesn't think they're going to be caught, so I have a hard time seeing much of a deterrent effect there, either. It's just as expensive as incarcerating someone for life, once the appeals are factored in. And we've seen far too many cases where the police got the wrong man, tried him, and got a conviction and a death sentence based on "well, he was a crook, and he was near there at the time." Our justice system is neither accurate enough nor precise enough for us to apply the most basic of penalties; how is playing with someone's life just?
Given that I generally accept killing a sophont as justified only in cases of self-defense or defense of others' lives, the only cases where I can see killing a prisoner as an appropriate act of the law are the ones in which there is simply no other way to keep them from murdering again. And the leeway that officers of the law already have to use lethal force seems to cover that adequately. For there to be a mechanism by which a person who is not even struggling to escape is snuffed out by a mechanism of the legal system is, frankly, completely inexcusable.
Then there's the issue of court-appointed defense attorneys failing to actually defend the accused in capital trials - especially when the defendant is a minority, uneducated, with a prior criminal record. As if being capable of petty burglary were the same thing as being capable of murder, or not having enough money to hire your own lawyer were a hanging offense in its own right. And that other working-class people seem to see this as a racial issue rather than a class issue bothers me - yes, it's more likely to happen to minorities, but it happens to poor white men who are falsely accused, too. Anyone who has to rely on the courts for their defense is not immune to this treatment. I wouldn't support the death penalty even if the justice system were perfect, but I think its proven near-incompetence in this area is a strong enough argument against it by itself.
I'm not a single-issue voter on this particular issue, but given a choice, yes, I will vote against someone who actively supports the death penalty, especially if they seem to think that its current application is fair. And yes, by the way, I do judge the bloody-minded rabble who clamor for the death penalty to be just as guilty of murder as the technician who slips in the needle.
In closing, let's let Mr. Costello weigh in:
Oh, it's hard to imagine it's the times that have changed
When there's a murder in the kitchen that is brutal and strange,
If killing anybody is a terrible crime,
Why does this bloodthirsty chorus come 'round from time to time?
"Let him dangle!"
