In the news last night was the story of two little girls who were beaten and stabbed (one, over 20 times) in the neck, abdomen and eyes! Jerry Hobbs, the confessed killer, is a man with a long criminal record who had once chased neighbors with a chain saw! Authorities think the death penalty may apply (y’ think?). Even in this horrific case, however, there will undoubtedly be those who oppose the death penalty as being too cruel.
The movie, John Q, staring Denzel Washington, was the story of an uninsured laborer whose little boy would die without a heart transplant. Hypothetically, given the choice between paying for a heart transplant, or supporting a convicted murderer for this rest of his life, virtually no one would support the murderer, yet we make similar choices all the time by rejecting the death penalty.
There is only so much money to go around and yet, by rejecting the death penalty, we spend millions of dollars each year to provide lifelong food, clothing, housing, and medical care for convicted murderers, when that money could be spent on education, the homeless, the mentally ill, drug rehabilitation, cancer or AIDS research, etc. Personally, I think it’s cruel to rob the innocent in order to support murderers.
2 comments:
Interesting post, Dr. I. I thought it was interesting how you chose to support the death penalty for economic reasons, at least in this post, than for the other reasons one normally hears from conservatives. However, that reason of support, since it is much more open to investigation than the ambiguous arguments about justice or morality or Old Testament ideals, really got me thinking. I did some quick and not very thorough research on the internet and what I found was quite surprising.
Because bias always exists, and especially on the internet, I was careful to look at sites which were both conservative and liberal in their stated positions. deathpenalty.org, a liberally-minded site presented some pretty damning statistics and figures from three different and independent studies about how much more expensive death penalty cases were than life sentence cases. A study done in 1993 says that it costs at least $1.25 million dollars more for a death penalty case than a life sentence.
However, after some searching, I did find a conservative source that was willing to talk, albeit very briefly, about the economic side of the death penalty. Thomas Eddlam wrote an article about anti-death penalty fallacies for the New American and one of those fallacies he mentions is cost. He cites the $1.25 million example I cited above and simply dismisses it out of hand. He says that the figures are "dubious at best" and therefore, "this argument deserves no response". He then goes on to say that even if this were the case, justice is not for sale to the highest bidder. He can make that argument because he makes his case for the death penalty on moral grounds, which are nebulous by nature, whereas your argument is more economic in nature and, therefore, cannot say the same thing.
I was simply wondering how you would respond to this based upon what you said in your post. However, knowing you, it is quite possible that you have already researched all of this, written ten books about it, and summarized it into 3 paragraphs and all the work I just did was for naught. But it intrigues me that perhaps what you wrote was a bit misguided, and that perhaps we are "robbing the innocent", not by supporting murderers, but by killing them.
All moral reasons aside, perhaps the economic view of capital punishment you have presented serves more to illustrate why America should no longer use the death penalty instead of continuing to.
Nathaniel presented some interesting information about the costs of the application of the death penalty. It appears the studies were done in either California in general or Los Angeles County specifically. A broader study of several different states and counties would help determine if this cost difference is due specifically to California's process or the general process for applying the death penalty. Then we could answer questions like is it cheaper to put someone to death in Texas than it is in California? Why? What are the consequences? Rates of error? etc.
I think this economic argument is actually a very useful strategy for eventually eliminating the death penalty all together. By constantly attacking errors in the application of the death penalty or potential risks for its misapplication it is possible to add additional appeals, checks and balances, and other steps in the process which will increase the overall cost. On an individual level these minor changes seem like (and may be) the right thing to do. But over time the cost differences between normal cases and death penalty cases will grow and it becomes much easier to argue that the death penalty is simply too expensive to carry out.
A possible solution is to expidite the processes for cases where there is strong evidence of guilt like several eye witnesses, strong DNA evidence, or a confession. These cases should be tried and if the defendant is proven guilty should have the sentance carried out within 30 days of the conviction. The costs of food and shelter, costs of appeals, costs for transport, costs for gaurds, and any other costs should be drastically reduced by swift action. But for cases where the evidance is not as strong maybe, from an economic standpoint, it makes sense to lock someone up without parol until they die.
Post a Comment