Archive: Opinions

I was pleased that as one of the most active and well-known death-penalty advocates in the country, Dudley Sharp took time out of his busy schedule to respond to my letter in your August 19 issue. Since your editorial of August 12, I've spent a reasonable amount of time researching the death-penalty-as-deterrent issue and have found a lot of passionate discussion on the Web.

Overall, what I found was that for any study that portends to prove a certain point of view, it's easy to find another study or discussion that finds serious flaws in it and puts forth another theory that completely contradicts it.

One interesting web site (www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htm) has provided links to over 4000 web sites that discuss death-penalty issues broken down into categories. No doubt, by perusing all of these documents, one could come up with a definitive conclusion.

Or maybe not. It seems that the evidence someone decides to rely on depends upon his or her gut feeling about the death-penalty issue. People who believe in an eye-for-an-eye and think the state should respond to killers in kind find evidence that supports that view. Likewise, people who believe that killing another human being is immoral and that capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders find evidence that supports them.

Many pro-death-penalty studies are based on economic models that assume, a priori, that a rational person will avoid situations that lead to a "loss." When these theories are extended to the death penalty, they assume a would-be murderer will behave rationally and will consciously avoid situations that lead to the death penalty.

However, models using a rational-murderer are flawed simply because, remarkably enough, not very many murderers are rational. Many otherwise-stable people kill in a fit of rage while many others are troubled by mental illness, alcoholism, or drug abuse. Their acts are indisputably irrational. Therefore, the assertion that "all prospects of a negative outcome deter some. There is no exception" is clearly inapplicable to most murders and, even if it were true, would in no way validate the idea that the death penalty is any more of a deterrent than life without parole.

While I'm sure there are many people in New York state who feel strongly that the death penalty deters murder, I found it fascinating that Mr. Sharp comes from Texas, the execution capital of the free world. I suspect many people here hold a different world view than those in Texas. For example, when asked about the likelihood that Governor Rick Perry had allowed the execution of an innocent man, one Texan primary voter not only approved his actions, but was reported to have stated that "it takes balls to execute an innocent man." I doubt many of us in Lansing would feel that was just.

By the way, that statement was in reference to Perry’s role in the execution of Todd Willingham and his alleged interference in the investigation of the Willingham case. Perry replaced three members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission days before the board was set to discuss a report that cast serious doubt on the evidence used to execute Willingham.

Another ongoing Texas death penalty case involves Hank Skinner who came within 47 minutes of execution before the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay and later agreed to hear his case. The court recently ordered the case be returned to the federal district court for hearings that should lead to DNA testing that Skinner has claimed will prove his innocence. His requests for DNA testing had earlier been denied by the Texas courts.

I think I'll stand by my earlier "trifecta." There's no valid evidence or study that shows that the death penalty deters murders. In fact, the available empirical evidence indicates the opposite. States and countries without death penalties generally have lower murder rates than those with them. A state's adoption or abolishment of the death penalty results in little or no change in the future murder rates in those states. And while there may be a debate about how many innocent people have been executed, there's no debate that there have been some.

Of course, the deterrence and innocence issues are only a couple of the aspects of the death penalty. There are many related problems regarding costs, the unequal application of the death penalty to minorities, and basic morality. But I'll save those for another time.

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