DEATH PENALTY
On November 8 we Californians
will vote on two conflicting propositions about the death penalty. Proposition
62 would repeal it, 66 would accelerate the process. I plan to vote for repeal,
and not because I’m a “bleeding-heart liberal.” I have other reasons:
The older I become, the less I
fear death, and realize it is probably not an effective deterrent to crime
anyway. The sort of monster who is a serial killer, a rapist of children, or
other horrific person may be filled with self-loathing and actually welcome
death. Why should we enable their suicide? If someone has committed a crime so
heinous that the death penalty is appropriate, then a quick execution is too
easy on them. Instead of receiving the death penalty, anyone deserving that
punishment should be locked away from the world for their lifetime, where they
can slowly contemplate the enormity of their actions and suffer mental anguish.
In California, most of those who have received the death
penalty promptly appeal it. The appeal process may continue for years and is
extremely costly to the state. Currently we have 741 prisoners on death row. According
to a 2011 study by U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law
School professor Paula M. Mitchell, abolishing the death penalty in California would
save about a billion dollars every five or six years.[i]
Perhaps most important, juries
are sometimes wrong, for a variety of
reasons. They may have relied on incomplete evidence, or been swayed by
emotional arguments. Since 1973, 156 United States prisoners on death row have
been released after DNA or other tests have exonerated them.[ii] (Others’ sentences have been commutated for
other reasons, such as irregularities in their trials.) Those freed lost years
of their lives, which is bad enough, but they were able to salvage some time; they
might have been executed if there hadn’t been a delay after sentencing. If the
death penalty is repealed, some innocent lives can be saved.
There are other reasons for
repeal, of course. Many people consider the death penalty to be a barbaric
practice that should not continue. Though I consider lifetime imprisonment a
more fitting punishment, I can sympathize with that viewpoint. Deliberately killing
anyone, even the most evil person, is abhorrent in a civilized society. We need
to repeal the death penalty.
Text copyright © 2016 by Carol
Stone
