Capital punishment is not only draconian...it is counterproductive...

It is extremely difficult for someone without personal experience with the criminal justice system, especially death penalty cases, to fully understand the circumstances. I used to be an advocate of capital punishment...until I informed myself and had to deal with the system. While I could go on for days about the idiocy of capital punishment, I will try to be somewhat brief.

When people claim that life imprisonment is less expensive than the death penalty they are ignoring the cost of trial to even get to the point of the years and years of appeals (that your tax dollars end up paying for since capital punishment is sought much more often against the poor, not to mention minorities...and I will not debate that with you, it is a fact that is easily verified by Department of Justice statistics. So look it up and save your breath). For instance, the federal system actually requires three trials to even get to the point where a sentence of death may be imposed. The first is a hearing system put in place before the criminal trial which is used to determine whether a particular defendant will be eligible for the death penalty. For this hearing the government must do extensive investigation, and the defense must do extensive investigation (and remember, the defense must be provided to indigent defendants, which means your tax dollars are being used...if you have no humanity, you most likely have greed and do not like your money wasted). This takes months and a lot of manpower hours that could be used by law enforcement to solve otherwise unsolved crimes. That is right, even at this early stage, capital punishment means less time and money devoted to solving other crimes, thereby leaving more dangerous criminals out on the streets. Then, if the Department of Justice decides the US Attorney for a particular district is authorized to seek the death penalty a criminal trial is the next step. Criminal trials of capital crimes are intense and extremely expensive. They constitutionally require qualified attorneys (two for each defendant in federal cases), which costs the government even more money (for instance, here in New Mexico, there are only a handful of capital qualified defense attorneys...the government has to pay them to represent indigent defendants at a premium according to the requirements of the Constitution and the Criminal Justice Act, along with investigators, mitigation specialists, etc.). Furthermore, they take much more time in the courtroom, and for every day a case is in court, the government loses thousands and thousands of dollars and hours of manpower (federal Marshals must be present in the courtroom, taking them off the streets, not to mention all the investigators who will be witnesses that are then pulled from their jobs). Then, if a guilty verdict is reached, after already having spent a few million tax payer dollars, a third trial occurs, the sentencing trial. The sentencing phase requires hundreds of hours of preparation and investigation on both sides, the defense looking for mitigatory factors, the government looking for aggravating factors. This results in another big bill to taxpayers. Finally, there just might be a sentence of death, which will automatically require years of appeal in accordance with due process guarantees of the Constitution, which means even more money and manpower down the drain. When you focus on the cost of capital punishment only from sentencing to carrying out that sentence, you miss millions of dollars that otherwise would not be spent.

The Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Whether a punishment falls within this category is based upon evolving standards of decency. Standards of decency have most definitely evolved since the time of this Nation’s founding, thereby discounting any argument that capital punishment was plentiful at the time the Constitution was signed. No other industrialized democracy in the world utilizes this draconian punishment. It’s use does, however, give us a bond to countries like Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan under the Taliban, Iraq under Saddam. Not exactly the best company for a country that claims it is the home of freedom and justice.

Capital punishment's only value as a deterrent to further crime is through specific deterrence. This means that the particular individual will not commit further crime. However, this is accomplished by life imprisonment without parole, without the expense of a capital trial and the other problems associated with capital punishment. Any argument that a convicted person sentenced to life without parole still has the opportunity to escape and commit further crime is ludicrous. With a sentence as serious as that, they will be placed in prisons that do not afford for such opportunity, and any escape will be an insanely rare exception that proves the rule. Any argument that escape is somehow a realistic possibility for prisoners sentenced to LWOP is laughable, and I find tends to come from people that have never had experience with prisons in this country.

Since capital punishment made a comeback in this country, violent crime has risen. It is obvious that there is no general deterrent value to capital punishment. Expanding the use of capital punishment may have the opposite effect, creating an environment where criminals no longer have anything left to lose, thereby increasing their dangerousness.

The jury system is not perfect. Awhile ago I did two blogs on men executed in Texas on questionable evidence. Furthermore, a criminal trial has the deck severely stacked against a defendant from the outset, and if you have never been through the process, this is something that is extremely difficult to understand. Trust me on that. This combination is too dangerous to accept the outcome. I tend to believe that it is better to let 10 guilty men go free (or in this case, not so much “go free” as sit in prison for the remainder of their natural lives without hope of parole) then to sentence one innocent man to death.

Also, the process of capital trials and the subsequent appeals has a devastating psychological affect on those involved. Court personnel have noted the anguish they suffer as a result of these cases. I recently heard the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court speak of the mental problems he has had associated with being informed that "the order of the court has been carried out" upon the death of an inmate. Even jurors have noted the anguish they go through knowing they sent someone to their death. Perhaps most poignantly, the process is drawn out and compartmentalized in such a way that it actually prohibits victims from gaining closure. They must endure three trials, a process that will likely take years. After that, they must then endure years of appeal, and the possibility of yet another three-phase trial. The process keeps these wounds open for years and years. It is a system where everybody loses, and it is an embarrassment to our society.