Abolishing death penalty necessary, but not the end [Capital punishment=smoking=speeding]

Capital Times ^ | 5-3-06 | Adam Benforado

[SJackson]

The death penalty will be abolished.

Perhaps it won't be in time to save Clarence Hill, the condemned Florida man whose challenge to the constitutionality of existing lethal injection procedures was heard by the Supreme Court last week, but the death penalty is going to be abolished.

The United States is the last Western country to permit it. Many religious leaders, including the pope, have condemned it. The courts have been chipping away at it. And the public is increasingly against it.

It will be abolished, and when that happens, we will, no doubt, end up feeling rather civilized and enlightened. We will be a nation that, in the words of the late Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, "no longer tinker(s) with the machinery of death."

Or so it would seem.

The problem is that, as a society, we make decisions to kill people all the time that have nothing to do with criminal justice or wars on terror, for that matter. Often, they involve the mundane details of our daily lives.

When the government decides not to lower the speed limit or not to ban cigarettes, it makes a decision to end life, just as it does when it elects to have capital punishment. We know that by choosing to continue our current policies, about 60 people will be executed this year, about 40,000 will be killed in vehicle accidents and about 400,000 will die of smoking-related conditions. We do not know who any of these people will be, but we know that they will die as a result of our collective decisions.

In their 1978 book "Tragic Choices," Judge Guido Calabresi of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Professor Philip Bobbitt of the University of Texas Law School suggested how difficult it is to regard an accident or smoking death as having been chosen by society. Although we have played a vital role in determining the outcome, we are not a recognizable character in the final individualized act.

The government is not driving the car that crosses the median at 60 mph, nor is it sitting at the bedside holding a cigarette to a person's lips. Part of the reason that capital punishment has been the focus of so much agitation is precisely because the government is putting the needle into the arm of the condemned inmate. It is, in essence, acting as both the judge and in those last salient moments the executioner.

Being concerned with society's role at the gallows is certainly important, as Columbia Law School Professor Jeremy Waldron pointed out recently in the context of torture. Establishing the perception of law as removed from brutality has been a major project in the Western world for centuries.

But if our primary interest is with preserving human life, we ought to be most worried about the role of the decision-maker and not with who ultimately pulls the trap door whether it is the state enforcing a sentence or a private actor making the fatal choice that we knew, statistically, someone was going to make.

When we set policy on health care, environmental protection or public transportation, we need to be fully aware that we are choosing something be it money, time or administrability over people's lives. These are lives that are just as real and just as savable as those of Clarence Ray Allen in California, Perrie Dyon Simpson in North Carolina, Marion Dudley in Texas, Marvin Bieghler in Indiana and Jaime Elizalde in Texas five of the men killed by lethal injection since January.

In a large society with diverse needs, making decisions about life and death may be inevitable, but such choices must not be made lightly. It is far easier to send a person to his death when you do not have to do the actual killing.

I we are to make good policy decisions ones that truly reflect our commitment to only ending life when we have to we must work to feel as responsible for the lung cancer victim as we do for the executed criminal. The day we abolish the death penalty will be a great day, but our work will be far from over.

Adam Benforado is a Frank Knox fellow at the Cambridge University Faculty of Law.

[SJackson]

Gives a whole new meaning to a last cigarette.

I guess burgers are OK.

Adam Benforado

Adam Benforado just graduated from Harvard Law School and is now trying to establish himself as a true modern renaissance man—that is, legal scholar, novelist, and third-string NFL quarterback (see jock photo on the left). His published work covers various topics that don’t interest people, including copepod morphology, the obesity epidemic, and esoteric poetry. If you’ve been hankering to give Adam a piece of your mind after stumbling upon one of his lengthy—but, really, not too lengthy—musings in, say, Crustaceana or the Emory Law Journal, or if you need someone to hold a clipboard and look suitably inexperienced, Adam would love to hear from you. He will be a Knox Fellow at Cambridge in the fall and, consequently, requests that all correspondence be conducted by passenger pigeon. email |

[Logophile]

But if our primary interest is with preserving human life, we ought to be most worried about the role of the decision-maker and not with who ultimately pulls the trap door whether it is the state enforcing a sentence or a private actor making the fatal choice that we knew, statistically, someone was going to make.

He's including abortion in this, right?

[wagglebee]

One thing I've been wondering about for a while is, would the American people be willing to "trade" a ban on capital punishment for a ban on abortion?

[Dog Gone]

He is the perfect spokesman for the nanny government.

[gusopol3]

and when we catch Osama, let's just show how enlightened we are and let him go.

[HoosierHawk]

When the government decides not to lower the speed limit or not to ban cigarettes, it makes a decision to end life, just as it does when it elects to have capital punishment. We know that by choosing to continue our current policies, about 60 people will be executed this year, about 40,000 will be killed in vehicle accidents and about 400,000 will die of smoking-related conditions. We do not know who any of these people will be, but we know that they will die as a result of our collective decisions.

Oy! Where to start?

A government deciding to choose policy of restricting personal freedom or the fact that restricting freedom is a collective decision?

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

One thing I've been wondering about for a while is, would the American people be willing to "trade" a ban on capital punishment for a ban on abortion?

I would because saving the life of the innocent must take precedence over giving the ultimate punishment to the guilty.

However with that I acknowledge that I would place the lives of other at greater risk then they would be if the death penalty was kept.

[TASMANIANRED]

Democrats merely want to execute the innocent, they only wish to abolish the death penalty for the guilty.

[Pakeman]

Gimmee my beer and smokes, I'm hitting the highway! WHHHOOOWEEEEE!!!

[sheik yerbouty]

No. Put them in the same cell..

[HoosierHawk]

Please fasten your seat belt.

[Pakeman]

Gimmee my beer and smokes, I'm hitting the highway! WHHHOOOWEEEEE!!!

[SES1066]

The regret here is the usual one, here is an obvious statist, ie a person who believes that it is the state/society/culture that is the progenitor of rights and responsibility, and he is well on course to being a lawyer/judge/politician/office holder.

There is a maxim to governance at all levels and it is opaque to all statists, that once you give an order you have removed discretion and will always have to give that order in the future. The Founders tried to create a government of least action, strongly circumcised in its native powers so that few orders could be given.

After 2 centuries, this model has been so burdened by past decisions to expand powers that the 9th and 10th Amendments to the US Constitution are considered dead letters. This boy, powerful in his urge to make a more perfect world, appears eager to make more orders to make us happy and healthy and will either make us constrained and ill or learn from experience. I hope for the latter but fear the former!

[wagglebee]

I have thought a lot about this. Many in the pro-life movement, especially Catholics (and an increasing number of evangelicals), are opposed to capital punishment.

I am personally 100% opposed to abortion under any circumstances and at the same time, I am in favor of the death penalty. However, I can also appreciate the argument that if life without the possibility of parole TRULY means that the person will spend the remainder of their life in prison, that society is still protected.

I do believe that we will see capital punishment abolished within the next couple of decades regardless of how people feel. So, if this is inevitable, would it also make sense to preempt this with a Constitutional amendment that would spare in excess of one million innocent lives each year?

[socialismisinsidious]

"I we are to make good policy decisions ones that truly reflect our commitment to only ending life when we have to we must work to feel as responsible for the lung cancer victim as we do for the executed criminal."

What a bunch of hooey, demagoguery and nonsense. He is trying to make the case against capital punishment and for socialized medicine all in the same stupid sentence.

Hey how about this pretty boy--the nanny state makes victims of some while it enslaves others...and that is irresponsible.

[FlingWingFlyer]

And the public is increasingly against it.

It's pretty obvious why this guy is "third-string."

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

I do believe that we will see capital punishment abolished within the next couple of decades regardless of how people feel.

I would not be so sure of that.

One of the poster children for keeping the death penalty is the one that escaped it, Manson. Can anyone doubt that he has kept spreading evil even though he is kept behind bars?

And I do not think you would find any takers on the other side.

[wagglebee]

You have a point, I was just pondering.

[Doc Savage]

Here's a thought. Let's ABOLISH Liberalism, Socialism, Communism, Environmentalism, Homosexualism, and Political Correctness! Now we're talkin!

[Graybeard58]

Ping

You might want to look at this.