The Death Penalty is NOT About Justice

The fallout over the New Jersey legislature's vote to abandon its death penalty has pointed out once again that people are sadly confused about the reality of capital punishment. I am personally against capital punishment--not only because its wrong for anyone to take a life for any reason, but because it doesn't accomplish anything. There is no justice in taking a life for a life, it merely compounds the injustice, and it isn't really any kind of deterrent in stopping anyone else from taking lives. In fact, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/) and the FBI's own statistics, the homicide rates in states with the death penalty are actually higher than those in states without. Homicide rates as a whole are actually falling in this country, according to those FBI statistics, in spite of what you hear on the MCI-controlled media.

Of course, the Republicans are frothing at the mouth about the New Jersey vote, and the families of murder victims are (understandably) quite upset at being denied what they consider justice for the loss of their loved ones. But really, how does the murder of one individual at the hands of the State make up for the loss of a loved one? Does having the State carry out the sentence of death make it better than doing it yourself? Does it bring back the loved one, or does it just satisfy a grieving family's need for vengeance?

If we are going to allow capital punishment (and we are the one of the few "civilized" nations on the face of the Earth to do so), we should at least be clear about the reasons for it. Is it really to protect society, or to wreak vengeance? If we are going to claim we want to protect society, then we need to re-examine our guidelines on who qualifies as a danger to that society. There are much bigger threats to our society than the guy who loses his mind for a minute to a particular set of circumstances that will never happen again--like those who make a career out of sacrificing our lives and freedoms for fun and profit.

I have a few questions for those who insist on this Old Testament eye-for-an-eye kind of "justice." First, why, if these executions are so justified, carry them out behind high walls and barbed wire, in the dark of night? Why not in broad daylight, in the public square, like Saudi Arabia (who makes no pretense about the reason they are cutting off someone's head or hands)? Why are Republicans, who portray themselves as so concerned for the sanctity of life when talking about abortion, screaming so loudly about New Jersey abolishing its death penalty--after all, isn't taking the life of an adult just a form of retroactive abortion? Why the hypocrisy in our concern that the method of execution not be cruel and unusual, when the sentence itself is cruel and unusual in comparison to how most of the rest of the world deals with its killers? It can't be a coincidence that the country with the highest murder rates also have a brutal and medieval system of justice--I think those two elements feed into and reinforce each other--blood for blood only begets more blood. The hypocrisy becomes even more evident when you consider the case of Wesley Allen Dodd, a convicted child molester and murderer, whose execution was actually protested because he, himself, wanted to be executed--in fact, went to court to stop the appeals being made on his behalf.

And if the goal is truly to protect society, why not take the millions of dollars spent each year on executions and use them instead to fund prevention programs? There are a lot of prevention programs that are demonstrably effective, but have very little reach because of chronic funding problems. After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure--especially when the "cure" is a system fraught with problems: corrupt DAs out to make a career, faulty evidence, bribed or prejudiced juries, to name just a few of the most egregious problems. We may never know how many innocent men and women have already died because the system failed, but we can demand there not be any more.