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Let the Death Penalty Die
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Author Thomas Cahill calls for an end to capital punishment—the subject of his powerful new book, A Saint on Death Row.
“L’chaim!” goes the ancient Hebrew toast. “To life!” I’ve long considered this expression a significant improvement on the customary toasts of the Western world, which tend to confine themselves to the good health of those doing the toasting. You don’t have to be Jewish to experience the communal thrill of “L’chaim!”
But whose life are we toasting, exactly? Everyone’s?Perhaps not.
In war, for instance, we certainly mean to confine our aspirations for life to ourselves and our allies. And what shall we say of those other occasions on which society approves, not merely the taking of life in war, but the deliberate elimination of designated individuals who have been declared unfit to live? I could, I suppose, be referring to the horrifying eliminations — of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and the handicapped — practiced by the Nazis, or I could have in mind far more ancient atrocities or even much more recent attempts at genocide in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa, attempts still in progress in some places.
Read a review of Thomas Cahill’s A Saint on Death Row.
Rather, I would ask you to consider critically the American practice of using law to execute fellow human beings. Though as early as prehistoric times we suppressed the once-widespread practice of human sacrifice, carried out to appease the gods, and we have in more recent times proscribed public execution, once practiced as a form of deterrence, we continue to insist that we should be free to execute those we deem unfit for life because of a crime we believe they have committed, usually the crime of taking someone else’s life.
Each year, the United States carries out fewer executions, as more states put a halt to the practice or abandon it altogether. The hundreds of prisoners who are gradually being freed by the application of DNA evidence to their cases have shaken prosecutors and judges (and even governors) throughout the country. These reversals of conviction suggest that something on the order of one in eight of our convictions is the conviction of a defendant who is actually innocent.
Moreover, as more and more states experience severe financial pressures, the idea of locking up a convict for life rather than executing him grows ever more appealing, since the process of execution requires far greater expense than life imprisonment. This is because the costs of answering the prisoners’ many appeals — a process guaranteed by the Constitution — requires enormous expenditures in even the most tight-fisted states, and these legal costs far exceed the costs of incarceration for life by many millions of dollars each year. Furthermore, if some of the lifers are subsequently found innocent — which is all too likely — their eventual exoneration can be real rather than merely ironic.
A Saint on Death Row: The Story of Dominique Green By Thomas Cahill 160 pages. Nan A. Talese. $18.95
Nonetheless, in the Western world Americans remain the principal executioners, a stupefying phenomenon to our closest allies. In Italy, for instance, each of our executions is front-page news in every national newspaper. Many Italian readers know the names of the Americans executed and their tragic stories, while in the U.S. such stories are swept to the back of our newspapers, if they are covered at all. Even from a worldwide perspective, only China and Iran regularly execute more people than we do. Europeans have abandoned the practice altogether, and no country may join the European Union if it permits execution. Whatever terrible things the Germans, the Austrians, the Poles, the Italians, and the French may have permitted (or even championed) in the 1930s and ‘40s, today they are as one in considering execution a form of barbarism. Not only this, throughout Europe prison sentences are generally shorter and prison conditions more humane than they are among us.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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ninicita:
The Church opposes abortion and the death penalty, the former with a great deal of vigor, the latter not so much. That lack of proportionality undermines the Church's credibility.
Mr Cahill, Let me tell you a true story, not some hypothetical or idealized version of the truth. I met a fellow named Inmate Smith. He was one of the "Onionfield Killers" (read the book, or see the movie, if you don't know). He was an old man, a heroin addict, a petty thief... and a murderer. But he never received the death penalty, since his sentence was overturned during the brief turn-around, in the 1970's. Was Inmate Smith a saint? No. Was he kind? No. Was he compassionate? No. Did he have regrets about murdering a man in cold blood? No. His only regret: " I didn't get pain no money for muh story! I mean, the book and the movie wuz about me! I shoulda got some money!" Inmate Smith died of old age, not long ago. And I wondered: Where is the justice? Ian James Smith, a good man and a hard-working police officer was murdered. And the killer died comfortably fed, living on the dole, never punished. Where is the justice? I would submit that for the tiny, minute number who are "innocent", the majority of convicted killers are guilty. And, surprise, the majority of men on death row are poor and black, because the majority of killers are poor and black. Mr Cahill, you have confused cause with effect. Men aren''t arrested because they are black. Men are arrested because they commit acts of evil, and they happen to be black, or brown or white. You see, unlike you, Mr Cahill, I have worked with these evil souls for two decades. And, when you leave the visiting room, they laugh at you, and all the other "fools" who they can "game" (manipulate) with their bogus stories. Yes, I believe in kindness... but, more than that, I believe in justice... here on earth, not just in heaven.
I think you should stop working with these people. There is no redemption for you in that obviously...justice on earth, not just in heaven. You are full of it.
WE NEED THE DEATH PENALTY!
If we limited the number of appeals to 3-4 vs. an indefinite amount, we'd reduce costs of housing, and courts time and expense.
IF we carried out the death penalty in a timely manner then hell yes it would be a damn good deterrent to crime.
We have the medical science now to prove beyond doubt of a persons heinous crimes, so it's about time we show the country we mean business!
Stop the endless drug trafficking, stop the endless robberies and murders, stop the harming of our children just playing on the street or in their yard.
Do the darn job that the courts have ordered and stop with endless appeals!
@jeffzekas who wrote:
"And, surprise, the majority of men on death row are poor and black, because the majority of killers are poor and black. Mr Cahill, you have confused cause with effect. Men aren''t arrested because they are black."
you sir are quite ill informed.
http://www.math.fsu.edu/~trogers/data/writing/Old_War_New_Name.html.pdf
There are plenty of individuals whom I would not call "fellow human beings", such as John Evander Couey, who kidnapped, raped and *buried alive* a preteen girl. It was his second known rape of a child, and his first known murder of one.
http://indigestible.nightwares.com/2007/03/09/guilty-and/
He's just one example of the kinds of filth we don't need on this planet. Doe-eyed stories about the occasional, *very* rare innocent are not sufficient to argue in favor of eliminating killing those who clearly do not deserve to live.
It's expensive, but that's only because we've allowed it to become so. As suggested above, a reduced appeals process would streamline things, as would doing away with excessive worrying about the "pain and suffering" of the condemned. Frankly, if one of these patches of scum feels a little pain before dying, I'm not particularly concerned.
The best argument for killing murderous asshats, though, is that it totally eliminates recidivism.
I simply find it hard to work up sympathy for murderers, and would rather see them dead.
Thank you.
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