Second, the law. I don't like that the death penalty is not imposed equally. Some murders are deemed more heinous than others, for example. If we are going to deal in retributionary justice, then to seek the death penalty for a cop-killer or a child murderer is to say that the life of a cop or a child is worth more than the life of a thirty year old single guy who fixes computers for a living. That doesn't make sense to me. I don't like the death penalty is disproportionately sought and executed in the case or poor people and black people. I don't like that that occurs because public defenders are generally less competent than prosecutors, not only because of skill level, but also because of enormous caseloads. Some of these things are generally unavoidable, but to return to the Jewish concept: until the law is perfect, it shouldn't kill people. It ain't gonna ever be perfect. Ergo, it shouldn't ever kill people.
Can't argue about the religious angle, but I WILL say that, generally speaking, I'd value the life of a child over my own(your description fits me to a t, oddly enough). I do object to the cop being more valuable, though.
As for the racial discrimination, I believe that studies have shown that blacks, controlled for the proportion of crime they commit and economic conditions, are within statistical boundries for convictions.
Still, even if you accept this as true, I think it calls for fixing the system - not necessarily throwing it out. After all, blacks also end up in prison more for other things. There are so few executions in the USA each year that a person can individually review each case.
Third, pragmatism. The death penalty is just too expensive. In our efforts to provide the huge amount of due process of law that we deem necessary before killing someone, we manage to expend insanely huge amounts of money. That money would be better spent on making prisons safer, or on improving public defender services for the rest of the criminal population.
Again, fix the system. Most death row inmates, even if commuted to LiP, are more expensive than the average inmate. Add in the extra lifespan and medical costs...
Fourth, philosophy. I think that when people kill other people in a retributionary manner, it brings all of us down to a baser, less civilized level. We should kill when it is the only way to stay alive, as in self-defense. We should kill when it is the only way to save a life, as in defense of others. We should kill when in a larger, political way, t is the only way for us to achieve what our elected officials have determined to be necessary to our security, as in war.
And executing klllers can qualify under your points - an executed murderer isn't going to kill again. There IS a murder rate in prison, so even LiP doesn't guarentee that they won't get 'lucky' and kill a prison guard. Or escape and kill again.
The death penalty does not deter criminals from committing violent crimes.
Doesn't it? I believe I've seen studies that go either way. In any case, going by psychological references, the very slowness of our justice system in executing robs the executions of much of their power. Executing a man in his fifties for crimes he committed as a teen, means that his crimes have long passed public memory - you have people working who weren't even born when the crimes were committed.
Incidentally, I am also staunchly against the wink-wink, nod-non approach many/most people in this country take about prison rape and other prison violence, and I hope that in my final term of school, I'll have the time to volunteer for Prison Legal Services. How we treat the people we hate and despise is an excellent measure of our own morality and as long as we tolerate and even expect and demand that cartain types of criminals be subjected to repeated violent rape we will, as a culture, have a serious gap in our moral code.
I'll agree with you here. Prison shouldn't be a lark, by any means, but as a
correctional facility, it should present an atmosphere where following the rules presents advantages. Allowing an inmate to rape another undermines the whole idea - the rapist learns he can get away with something, the raped learns that the law can't protect him.
