No death penalty in New Jersey
There are a couple of emotional issues on which Americans aren’t rational. When you talk to folks about gun control, there usually isn’t an exchange of information. There are talking points in which neither party hears the other. The Death Penalty is the same way. If you look at the Christian point of view you have the eye for an eye crowd and the turn the other check/don’t cast the first stone crowd.
I would simply ask what is the purpose the law? If you believe that the law exists to keep people safe then you will come to one conclusion - the death penalty is wrong. If you believe that the law exists to make victims feel better then you will come to a different conclusion.
Personally, I don’t think that the death penalty works. There are some people who are dangerous to the general public. Lock those folks up and throw away the key. I don’t think that the state should be in the business of executing its own people.
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From USA Today:
Gov. Jon Corzine signed legislation Monday ending capital punishment in New Jersey, making the state the first to legislatively do so since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to restore the penalty in 1976.
Advocates and legislators stood behind Corzine and applauded the new law, which replaces capital punishment with life in prison without parole. Corzine said the new law “best captures our state’s highest values and reflects our best efforts to search for true justice rather than state-endorsed killing.” (more…)
This was a no-brainer, since NJ has not executed anyone for a long, long time. I hope this is replicated in other states as we evolve. Short answer: execution doesn’t work in reality; endless appeals cost us taxpayers even more. Aside from that, the ONE chance of a wrong execution is not what we’re about. Ethical issues and fumbling of executions also figure. USA supreme court is currently reviewing constitutionality of death penalties as a whole vis a vis “cruel and unusual punishment”. This is good news.
Medicale -
I totally agree.
thanks for your comments.
ET: “I would simply ask what is the purpose the law? If you believe that the law exists to keep people safe then you will come to one conclusion - the death penalty is wrong.”
Your conclusion is a non sequitur but the question is wrong. Does the death penalty keep people safer than other forms of punishment? I would give a marginal yes on 2 accounts. First, the recidivism with the Death Penalty in 0%. So the person executed won’t kill other inmates, guards or civilians if paroled. Second, the death penalty is as much or even more of a deterrent as any other punishment. Lately the deterrent effects of death penalty has been resurrected by economists who have studied the issue. From a recent NY Times articles:
“The evidence on whether it has a significant deterrent effect seems sufficiently plausible that the moral issue becomes a difficult one,” said Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago who has frequently taken liberal positions. “I did shift from being against the death penalty to thinking that if it has a significant deterrent effect it’s probably justified.”
Professor Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, a law professor at Harvard, wrote in their own Stanford Law Review article that “the recent evidence of a deterrent effect from capital punishment seems impressive, especially in light of its ‘apparent power and unanimity,’ ” quoting a conclusion of a separate overview of the evidence in 2005 by Robert Weisberg, a law professor at Stanford, in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science.
“Capital punishment may well save lives,” the two professors continued. “Those who object to capital punishment, and who do so in the name of protecting life, must come to terms with the possibility that the failure to inflict capital punishment will fail to protect life.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/us/18deter.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
“I don’t think that the state should be in the business of executing its own people.” ecthompson
Oh, so then I take it you oppose abortion? I’m going to guess that is not the case. The liberal position is that it’s okay to kill innocent unborn babies but let’s weep and cry like bleeding hearts for the misfortune of brutal murderers that are justly executed. The purpose of the death penalty is to punish evildoers. Set aside the question of if the death penalty works as a deterrent for a moment. Without the death penalty, the murderers don’t pay. The very ones who gave no mercy receive mercy. That is a massive injustice.
The death penalty is certainly a deterrent if used in sufficient quantity. In Germany before the outbreak of WWII, all felons were executed. I am told that you could walk down any street in the dead of night with your life savings in your hand and be very confident that nobody would bother you. The way to make the death penalty work is to summarily execute all murderers, drug dealers, pedophiles and rapists. You will be surprised at how quickly crime decreases.
Roger -
I don’t think that an unborn fetus, a mother and a doctor is the same as the state sponsoring the death penalty.
I don’t think that we want to compare our society to chaos that was Germany before WWII.
Finally, what ratio of innocent to truly guilty do you think is acceptable? I’m not crying for murderers. If we could be 100% correct, 100% of the time, I’m all for it. But we can’t and we aren’t. If the death penalty was handed down evenly or close to even, then I’m down with it but it is not. Oh, i’m sure if you get locked up for 3 or 4 hours, you’ll think that it was hell on earth. You and those behind bars are paying for their crimes by being locked up.