From:
"More innocents die when we don't have capital punishment"
by Dennis Prager
June 17, 2003
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp20030617.shtml

excerpts:

One of the most common, and surely the most persuasive, arguments against capital punishment is that the state may execute an innocent person. One reason for its effectiveness is that proponents of capital punishment often do not know how to respond to it. That's a shame. For while the argument is emotionally compelling, it is morally and intellectually shallow. First of all, there is almost no major social good that does not lead to the death of innocent individuals.

[...]

Anyone whose criterion for abolishing capital punishment is saving innocent lives should be for a 40-mile-per-hour speed limit and for abolishing roller coasters. But death-penalty abolitionists aren't. And that is why they cannot logically build their case against capital punishment on the argument that an innocent may die. They accept a large number of social policies that kill innocents.

[...]

The abolitionist argument that an innocent might be killed is false for a second reason. Far more innocent people have already died because we did not execute their murderers. The abolitionist has convinced himself, and a sincere but gullible public, that only a policy of capital punishment threatens innocent lives, while abolition of capital punishment threatens no innocent lives. That is entirely untrue. Murderers who are not executed have murdered innocent people -- usually fellow prisoners. And the very real possibility of escape from prison means that murderers threaten far more innocent lives than capital punishment does.

RBMN, I couldn’t put it better.

Another twist that I could put to this is the following: As a kid, I vaguely recall the capital punishment debates of the 1970’s. One of the Pro-crowd’s arguments was that if a criminal knew that he would be killed if he murdered someone, he was less likely to kill. In California, nearly 80% of armed robberies were with either unloaded or fake guns. Capital punishment was a deterrent to murder.

Mitch, this is the same argument that gun proponents use today. I believe both crowds are right: Allowing conceal-and-carry deters crime and capital punishment laws deter murder.

Please. In a well-constructed maximum security prison, which is the only proper facility for violent felons, the chance of escape is so small it can't be measured. A prisoner who is locked down in solitary is very unlikely to hurt anyone,either. If you really wish to minimize danger to the innocent public, the answer is to lock violent offenders up, upon their first offense, until they are infirm from old age, in a super max facility. If this murderer had received a 60 year sentence upon his initial conviction for a violent crime, Dru Sjodin would be alive. Executing somebody after they have murdered, and very few murderers kill as their first violent offense, is the cliched barn door closing after the fact. Once someone has indicated a willingness to violently prey on the public, it is time to segregate them from the public until they are too damned old to harm anyone. Most of 'em will die behind bars anyway; prison life in solitary ain't much for longevity.

Re: Will Allen at June 24, 2005 09:48 PM

I don't want some sick rape-murderer (for example) to outlive the parents of his victim.

Just send them on that express train to Hell, where they belong, painlessly as possible.

And, for anyone to actually get the death penalty these days, you have to be one sick monster. You really do.

You miss the point, RBMN. The goal is to segregate the violent offender for 50 or 60 years BEFORE he works his way up to murder. Very, very few murderers commit that crime as their first violent offense.

My point is, there's nothing wrong with the victim's family(s) getting their full measure of justice. Very few people are put to death these days. To get to that point, you really have to be the worst of the worst (e.g. McVeigh.) Make sure these people have good lawyers from the beginning, and paid experts, and all their appeals, but then send them to the next world. They shouldn't soil ours. God calls us to be good, but also calls us to destroy evil.

RBMN,

While I share what you think about killers, I STRONGLY disagree with Prager's article. With the single exception of the possiblity (and, in a macro sense, inevitability) of executing the innocent, I'm pro-death penalty - and unfortunately, it is a showstopper.

I'll be carrying out a detailed fisking of Prager's piece on Monday. While I agree with Prager on a vast preponderance of things, this may be the sloppiest thing I've seen him do.

Re: mitch at June 25, 2005 10:44 AM

Well, you're living in the right State then. :-)

RBMN, to take Prager's argument further, why even give murder suspects the right to trial? This way, there won't be any murderers who escape while in county lock up.

Furthermore, to confuse the action of the state in putting someone to death with the regulation of traffic is absurd.

And to top it off, he claims that he can accept moral responsibility for any innocent person executed by the state. What the hell does that mean? Besides the fact that the whole notion of accepting responsibility has been watered down to the point that it is meaningless.

Prager knows how to seem reasonable to most of his target audience. That does not make him reasonable.

I have to say that I truly believe that the death penalty for murderers would make a change for the better. I also have to say that I am really suprised that more murderers haven't been killed by the victims families. I know how I feel about my own kids and look out anyone who hurts them.
I believe if they can be found guilty beyond a shadow a doubt they should be put to death within the first year.
I believe in this also for or maybe especially for parents who have murdered their children. We should not morn the loss of a bunch of sick twisted individuals. I'm sorry if someone inocent is lost along the way but I believe we will lose less lives to murderers if it comes down to their own lives.

I know that it's happened in America, that innocent people have been framed for murder, or have been so unbelievably unlucky as to have all circumstantial evidence point to them. Maybe you took a shortcut walking home from work, down the proverbial dark alley, and you trip over something--something that happens to be the dead body of the jerk neighbor that you had a loud argument with yesterday. You catch yourself, not realizing what it was, and you end up with blood on your shoe for the police to find. I'm sure that's happened sometime in the two-hundred-plus-year history of America.

In that event, if twelve of your fellow citizens good and true don't believe your lawyer, or don’t believe you if you take the stand, and they sentence you to death, then you have been unfairly and exceptionally unlucky. But as you’ve no doubt noticed, the World does not stop spinning every time one of us humans has been unfairly and exceptionally unlucky. Visit a cancer hospice sometime. Easy for me to say now, but that’s how life is. Things go wrong. That’s not a reason to let the real homicidal monsters off the hook.

RB,

While you're right in a very high-level sense, this bit here: "Things go wrong. That’s not a reason to let the real homicidal monsters off the hook."

Who's letting anyone off the hook? The choice is not "Death or Release", it's "Death or Life In Prison With No Parole". Perhaps not as satisfying as killing a murderer - but a recoverable error.

Saying "life's not fair" is too easy. There's a simple - not "easy", but simple - way to ensure both results, safeguarding the innocent AND makign society safe, life without parole. The ONLY thing it lacks is the satisfaction of killing a monster. Which is more important - that satisfaction, or ensuring an *worse* evil doesn't take place?

I said *worse* evil, and I meant it. Because executing the innocent is a double evil; it harnesses state power to kill an innocent person, which is worse than murder in its own way, and *it lets the guilty go free*. Think about it - is the State going to chase the real killer after someone's already been executed? Hardly .

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