To Kill a Murderer
Thoughts on capital punishment
I can’t help but notice that President Biden’s commuting of the death sentences of 37 federal prisoners convicted of murder has re-ignited the debate over the usefulness and morality of the death penalty.
A big part of the debate is over whether capital punishment actually serves as a deterrent to murder. Extensive studies involving interviews with convicted murderers and other violent criminals seem to yield no clear, definitive answer.
I have no doubt that capital punishment is a deterrent, because it clearly deters the convicted murderer from ever committing murder again. That much is not open to debate.
But I believe that the so-called humanitarian concerns should be addressed by leaving the decision in the hands of the victim's family or other survivors; who better to decide whether the killer of their loved one should live or die?
Some might choose mercy, while some would surely invoke the death penalty, as should be their right.
Some might want to pull the switch, spring the trapdoor, administer the injection or pull the trigger themselves. And some might say, “Just put him in a room with us for five minutes, leave us a couple of Louisville Sluggers, and we’ll call it even.”
And some may want to carry out the death sentence by any other means, up to and including the manner in which their loved one had been slain. And methinks that would not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition (ratified in 1791) of “cruel and unusual punishments" (note that it doesn’t say "cruel or unusual") because although a particular method of putting a convicted murderer to death might be cruel, it having been used on their loved one renders it "not unusual." In fact, that makes it (to employ a phrase once used by Abraham Lincoln, albeit on a different topic) altogether fitting and proper.
And that might even be a more effective deterrent to those merely contemplating murder.
Meanwhile, I addressed the question of whether our justice system is still capable of deterring killers here, and an essay I wrote back in November on how bloody murder is currently not deterred, but even incentivized, may be read here or here.
ST
A murderer has already agreed that death is an appropriate penalty for an offense. The only question at trial is whether the real murderer has been caught.
Capital punishment may be a deterrent, but not as much of one that it could be. In this country it is rare that a death sentence is carried out in less than 20 years. To be an effective deterrent the date of conviction to the date of execution would need to be far shorter to be a true deterrent. It used to be. While there were certainly problems in the 1800s such as executing an innocent person, the layers of legal junk has gotten so out of hand the time till execution has gotten way too long. And the deterrence has practically disappeared. Perhaps President Trump will become interested in this subject.