Centerfield

I favor the death penalty in principle much more than in practice. I vehemently object to the attitude of many death penalty opponents who consider themselves morally superior. Many of the same arguments would lead one to take a pacifist position toward war, and I feel that a society that is not willing to inflict death in certain cases is a society unwilling to fight for its survival.

At the same time, it is true that people are wrongly convicted more often than we'd like to believe. My own preference would be to not inflict the dealth penalty on those convicted of a single murder. Mass murderers, or recidivists should be eligible. Also, murders committed in prison should be eligible for the death penalty, because without it, what's left to punish them with?

rick,

I agree -- I don't have any problem with the death penalty as a matter of philosophy, but I can't support how it occurs in the U.S. First, there's entirely different legal standards across the states, and while federalism is often a wonderful thing, I'm not sure it works when it comes to executions. Moreover, out of all possible cases, so few people are charged with the death penalty, and then of those that are charged, very few are setenced to death, and then a whole bunch of those get overturned on appeal, and then given the amount of time that generally passes, the chances of actually being executed -- out of everyone who commits a crime who would be eligible -- are miniscule.

And I think so many things matter besides the actual action of the defendant -- how good one's lawyer is, the type of victim, publicity, etc.

And perhaps what bothers me most is that neither the Supreme Court nor the states have had very consistent standards over time. What matters now isn't what mattered 20 years ago. Whether the mentally retarded can be executed, whether youth matters, whether it has to be juries or judges, whether and how mitigating factors matter... It's as if the SC clearly wants to restrict executions to the very worst of the worst crimes, and that's a great idea, but I don't know how to achieve that. Just the fact that peole keep changing their minds about what's allowed is enough to make me a skeptic.

I I had my druthers, I'd restrict it to serial killers. But I don't even know it that's workable.

It seems like I'm not the only one ambivalent about the death penalty. I'm certainly not morally opposed to killing some people--I'm glad Timothy McVeigh is no longer with us and I wish Charles Manson wasn't around either. But there are serious problems with the application and I question how much deterrent value the death penalty actually has.

Kate,

In theory, you could limit the death penalty to serial killers. But the problem is when you try to do something like that, you run into a problem with definition. What constitutes a serial killer? I have no doubt that prosecutors would try to expand the definition and it's unlikely that a statute could define a serial killer specifically enough to prevent arguments over whether this or that person is a serial killer.

I'd be willing to get rid of the death penalty if life in prison actually meant life in prison, as in no release, ever. No "good behavior" time off. No parole. No "early release." Life, as in "the rest of your natural." You leave prison only in a box, to enter a grave.

There are two great attractions to the death penalty. There's the revenge/Hammurabic justice factor--an eye for an eye, a life for a life. And then there's the fact that there is a zero recidivism rate among those who've been subjected to the death penalty. They do not rise from the grave to commit more crimes. Give me a zero recidivism rate with real life sentences, and I'd be willing to give up revenge and tit-for-tat justice.

I would feel better about the retribution thing -- more convinced that was actually working -- if it wasn't true that the number of people who get executed is a miniscule percentage of the number of people who commit murder. Actually, just the figures for the number of capital sentences that are overturned on appeal is surprisingly high -- I seem to recall it's over 30%, possibly higher. Or I'd even be satisfied if I thought that the few people who got executed had committed the worst crimes. But I'm skeptical.

What I'd like to see are figures for how many people who were sentenced to life without parole were eventually released, and the number of those that actually committed murder again.