Let me first say that I don't have any real objection to the death penalty. The Constitution specifically provides for it in the 5th Amendment, to wit:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.Nevertheless, it is time to cease executions. My reasoning is fairly straightforward. First, we make mistakes. Once someone is executed it can not be remedied, and in recent years we have had too many people freed for mistaken identity, prosecutorial misconduct, or outright fraud on behalf of the state. 30 years of freedom lost, while horrific in the abstract, pales before the killing of an innocent man. Second, it costs too much. For what it takes to slog through the endless appeals process we could keep the condemned in prison for decades. Last, if retribution is the goal, why not keep the guy on ice for 23 hours a day in a concrete cell, sleeping on a thinly-padded concrete bed, looking at concrete walls? Is it not more satisfactory to the vengeance crowd to make this Tsarnaev guy live for 60 years in a box, hopelessly and irredeemably alone? You can only kill him once, but you can make him wish he was dead every day.
Like I said, pretty straightforward reasoning. I don't really care about the usual appeals to emotion, it doesn't matter to me that people like to argue that we're like North Korea or other extremist hellholes. I also find it amusing that the death penalty is seen as a conservative position, especially since a lot of the people that oppose capital punishment are in favor of abortion. Criminals at least earned their fate. But that's neither here nor there. I object purely on the basis of economics and human fallibility.
In the words of Gary Gilmore, let's do it. Let's stop executing people. The proponents will still get their pound of flesh, the opponents will sleep better at night, and in the end the criminals will still pay the ultimate price, but we won't pay as much to extract it from them.
