Dying For Sanity

As we began combing through the news for today's commentary, a news item from CBS from Monday night, floated to the top of our stack of articles. The article notes that, as of Monday evening, a ballot measure in California passed - meaning that Californians will be voting this November on whether their state wants to follow seventeen others in abolishing the death penalty.

The debate on whether or not to keep the death penalty is a debate that seems to be happening in every state from Alaska to Nebraska. Even in countries like Tunisia, people all over the world appear to be taking another look at the death penalty. Many are getting rid of it, or at the least, curbing its use.

Last Friday, in North Carolina, a fairly new law - the Racial Justice Act - was applied by Cumberland County Judge Greg Weeks, who judged that death row inmate Marcus Robinson's case was obviously skewed by racial bias. So Judge Weeks commuted Robinson's sentence from the death penalty to life in prison, as the law allows. In short, the judge thought the previous death penalty sentence was unjust.

That quest for justice is what drove a committee created by the National Research Council to study the question death penalty advocates and opponents have been arguing for years: Is the death penalty actually effective as a deterrent to further crime?

It's a question that's been asked for thousands of years.

Virtually everyone who's studied ancient history knows about the deterrent used by the ancient Roman armies. They would torture and kill criminals who were guilty of serious crimes, and hang their bodies from posts next to the road, with a label telling the world their crime. It was part of what generated the Pax Romana, the period of peace that lasted about two hundred years, when Roman citizens were amazingly safe in the ancient world.

Of course, the practices that brought about that peace were brutal - and often unjust.

Back in our own time, the NRC's Committee of Deterrence and the Death Penalty looked at many studies of the death penalty, both pro and con, from around the world. After looking at all the data, they determined that the effectiveness of the death penalty is simply unclear.

In short, it doesn't work everywhere the same, if it works at all.

The committee did seem to agree that the way most of America currently uses the death penalty, its effectiveness as a deterrent is often minimized by factors like the long, drawn out legal battles we allow. As Miriam Thimm Kelle, the sister of James Thimm, a victim of a long-standing Nebraska death row inmate said recently, the way the system is now, when an inmate is sentenced, the families of the victim are sentenced too. Every time legal proceedings come back up for the death row inmate, the emotional wounds of the families are torn open.

While we understand the emotional anger and hunger for vengeance the families and friends of some victims of serious crime have, we honestly believe there are some punishments worse than death. Those who are creative can even imagine punishments that don't violate Geneva Convention rules, but would likely make the lives of anyone sentenced an unending, living hell.

Good. If someone has done significant evil, they should have to pay the price of their actions. The rest of us - especially the friends and families of the victims - should not also have to pay that price.

We'd love to see the day when the death penalty was abolished, and the only place you might see the Grim Reaper at work is a haunted house or a cheesy movie. Maybe that will happen someday, though we doubt it will be within our lifetimes.

For now, just put our wish for the death penalty on the "Things We'd Like To See" list - right next to our request to be millionaires.