The Ultimate Sanction

The reason why the left is not willing to trust the government with the death penalty is that you cannot recover from being dead. 

Other things the gov't gets wrong can be rectified, but being dead is kind of permanent.

Points well made, Assemblyman, and perhaps logic will prevail in the hallowed halls of Trenton.  I highly doubt that, though.

If one accepts the proposition that the right to life is inalienable, then how, Mr. Assemblyman, is the death penalty a sanction that government may justifiably pursue?  The imposition of such a terminal sanction cannot be justified based on the theory of self-defense.  The crime has been committed and any consequent execution will not operate to prevent the shedding of innocent blood.  Nor will it bring back the victim.  Are you suggesting that by some strange societal alchemy premised on retribution in an age of grace the collective will of the people usurps the divine right of God to grant or deny existence?  Under the Soviet model, God is replaced by the state, which is the source of all rights, including the right to life.  In a constitutional republic which recognizes that the law of nature and nature's God is supreme to that of man, it is wholly inapproriate for government to assume such jurisdiction. 

Moreover, as a Christian, what grand cosmic imperative is satisfied by taking a life for the sake of vengeance?  By your logic, the Apostle Paul should not have been welcomed as a source of divine revelation, but taken to the village square and summarily executed for the myriad killings he both fomented and staged.  Yet God in His mercy allowed him to not only escape the final fate that he rightly deserved, He chose to reveal His truth through a man whose hands were bathed in the blood of saints.  When you execute a criminal, you foreclose any opportunity he or she may have to accept salvation.  Many of the most hardened of miscreants have, throughout history, come to accept God's grace through His Son.  It is no coincidence that the beloved hymn Amazing Grace was penned by a former slave trader.  The hard reality is that we all stand as murderers before our Creator because we, through our sin, put Christ on the cross. 

How then can we take the moral initiative to eradicate our fellow man, regardless of his loathesome countenance?  People of faith believe that God will Himself judge those whom have shed innocent blood.  There is no escape from this end.  Conversely, he will show mercy to those whose lives have been taken and thloved ones who have suffered horrific pain.  My father was nearly stabbed to death by a young woman in Newark when I was 10 years old.  While I couldn't comprehend why someone would arbitrarily decide to harm him, I understood that any anger and hatred I returned would be in vain.  Much later in life, I spent nearly a decade working with the very same type of at-risk youth who had attempted to kill my father.      

Moreover, despite your trepidation, your endorsement of the death penalty ultimately presupposes that it will be implemented in a fair and unbiased manner in perpetuity.  A cursory glance throughout recent history belies that rather dangerous assumption.  For each instance that the death penalty has been employed as a tool of justice, it has been misused infinitely more often as a means to exterminate those repugnant to the will of the state or at odds with the whim of the majority (see the holocaust, Stalin's collectivization schemes, Mao's great people's reform campaigns, etc.).  Precisely because I believe man are not angels, I can never bring myself to arm them with dispositive power over matters uniquely suited to heavenly agents.  

As a christian and a conservative, moral consistency dictates that I abhor murder in whatever form it may manifest itself, be it abortion, homocide, or government sponsored executions.  While this perspective places me at odds with many of my fellow conservatives, I am at peace that I have honored my Savior by taking to heart the unfathomable mercy that He has shown me and that I have left in God's hands what is uniquely within His province. 

*One note on deterrence -- As stated previously, I counseled incarcerated at-risk youth for the better part of a decade.  In that time, I dealt face to face with murderers, rapists, arsonists ... go down the list of deviant conduct and I addressed it on an up close and personal basis.  As an attorney, I was familiar with various studies on the death penalty and its alleged deterrent effect.  In fact, in running for public office, I often cited to these studies to support my former position in favor of the death penalty.  However, my experiences made me realize that the young men who had committed the most heinous acts of violence didn't care whether they lived or died.  Neither mortality nor the prospect of execution factored into the equation of whether they would take a life.  One who lacks any semblance of self-worth will not be deterred by the threat of self-anihilation.  I often suggest to those who support abortion that they actually attend and witness one before solidifying their views.  Similarly, I would suggest that those tout the death penalty as a magic bullet sit across from a stone-cold killer and engage them in conversation.  You will find that they pursued no rational balancing of prospective punishment versus temporal rage prior to taking a life.  Surprisingly, however, you may discover the seeds of genuine remorse.  And it is these seeds that yield a harvest of repentance that can transform a lost soul.    

This thread, if nothing else, isolates some core differences on the death penalty; while the foundation of my claim that the death penalty is an abhorrent practice that neither serves justice nor should be the provence of government, I do not base my claims upon belief in the supernatural.

It is utterly and totally hypocritical for the Right to contend that they are "protecting life" at conception -- which is in actuality a mass of cells -- yet consider actual life, that is, a definition of life that we can all agree on, not worthy of the same entitlement for protection.  When it comes to sending men and women off to the war, the Right were some of the most vociferous supporters of the effort; when it comes to the death penalty, the Right invokes some bizarre Old Testament eye-for-an-eye philosophy that negates their own principles of limited, non-invasive government.

There are times when I hear Pres. Bush speak on abortion, stem cells or during his more evangelic moments of fervor, and I have to question whether he actually believes the fundamentalism that he's spouting; I felt the same way when I read Ass. Carroll's post on the death penalty yesterday, because it seemed like a strange parody of moralistic philosophy, one that is belied by the very system of ethical beliefs that seemingly buttress it. On a political level, I truly believe that if the majority of Republicans think like Mr. Carroll and promote the same policies -- make a woman's body property of the state, no stem cell funding (no matter the scientific possiblities), only the most extreme strains of religio-fundamentalism are acceptable -- then the Republican Party will continue to wain in influence and lose elections. I shudder to think, for example, that Ass. Carroll equates the death of a human being via the death penalty as the same as the  "numerous innocents [who] die at abortion clinics each week." One of the core fallacies of Carroll's argument is that he presumes that "life" means the same thing to every person, even though fetuses can't feel pain, in all probability, till past the 20th week, nor are they able to survive on their own; this is hardly "life," despite fundamentalist conceptions of it. Yet we all agree that a person past birth is alive -- and Mr. Caroll sees nothing wrong with having the government kill that person. There's a word here that may be appropriate to use to describe Mr. Carroll's position...

If Carroll is going to make the claim that the left a) has faith in government and b) should therefore have faith that the government is going to kill the right citizens for the right crime, then my reverse enthymeme would look something like this: If conservatives believe a) government should have a limited, unobtrusive role in the lives of private citizens then b) government shouldn't tell physicians what they can and can't do with their patients (right-to-die is a fundamental prerogative), a woman's reproductive system should not become property of the state, science should be able to make advances without the morality police watching them (in most cases), and two persons of the same sex (or opposite sex) should be able to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own homes and be afforded the same rights as heterosexual couples under the law.

MartinOne opines:

"[W]hile the foundation of my claim that the death penalty is an abhorrent practice that neither serves justice nor should be the provence [sic] of government, I do not base my claims upon belief in the supernatural."

 Nor do many of us, Martin, though it is necessary for you to pretend that all those who hold conservative beliefs do.  It is the only way you can justify many of your views.  (By the way, Martin, as for your childish “contraction” of “Assemblyman,”  just grow up!)

Martin also says:

"It is utterly and totally hypocritical for the Right to contend that they are "protecting life" at conception -- which is in actuality a mass of cells -- yet consider actual life, that is, a definition of life that we can all agree on, not worthy of the same entitlement for protection."

Really?  So your argument against the death penalty for horrendous and vicious murderers is pointing out what you perceive as a flaw in the position of the “Right?”   Well, thanks for that enlightening contribution!  

Did it never occur to you that there is a significant difference between terminating innocent lives, and fixing a just punishment for the utterly unjustified life-destroying actions of a vicious and remorseless murderer?  

Your position, then, is that it is okay for one person, and one person acting alone, to decide terminate an innocent life without the necessity of receiving any input, or even in the case of a minor, the notification of the girl’s parents, or of the father, and without any need whatsoever to give consideration to alternatives, and that it is perfectly okay to make that unilateral decision as late in the development of the pregnancy as she may wish, including during the third trimester when what you term the “mass of cells” would indeed be perfectly capable of survival.   

But your position on capital punishment is that in governing our society, there is no standing whatsoever to exact a just punishment in the case of an evil killer who has viciously and unjustifiably taken the life or lives of others, regardless of the limitations or safeguards built into the process. 

Martin, you also forgot to address deterrence, the “life vs. life” point we addressed above -- the one made by Sunstein and Vermeule – that the failure to exact the death penalty in the case of said unjustifiable and vicious murderers will result in more innocent lives being taken.  A vicious killer will have snuffed out all of their inalienable rights. 

As they pointed out, in part:

"Recent evidence suggests that capital punishment may have a significant deterrent effect, preventing as many as eighteen or more murders for each execution. This evidence greatly unsettles moral objections to the death penalty, because it suggests that a refusal to impose that penalty condemns numerous innocent people to death. Capital punishment thus presents a life-life tradeoff, and a serious commitment to the sanctity of human life may well compel, rather than forbid, that form of punishment. Moral objections to the death penalty frequently depend on a distinction between acts and omissions, but that distinction is misleading in this context, because government is a special kind of moral agent. "

So, Martin, your position must be that though we know there will be more living, breathing innocent human beings viciously murdered, now in the future -- absent the known deterrent effect of capital punishment that will inexorably result from this abolition bill -- you, Martin, could care less?   

Finally, Martin, given the extremely high likelihood in New Jersey that a disproportionate number of those present and future innocent victims of murder will be minorities, please explain why your position on this is not also racially insensitive – or worse?

. . . .

 As for the position of E Sedler, above, that this issue should be put up for a ballot question, I could not agree more.  If, after a thorough and open public debate on this issue the public should decide to abolish capital punishment, then we would all be more likely to accept the result.

The fact is that in a number of instances, and in spite of their rather persistent efforts to chip away at its application, even our State’s Supreme Court has concluded that capital punishment is not unconstitutional.

But the deceitful manner in which this abolition bill is being rammed through the legislature, in the absence of any serious public debate and during a lame duck session, where a huge number of out-going Senators and Assembly members of both parties will vote on the bill without the “checks and balances” inherent in a representative democracy, makes this an absolute abuse of power by the governing majority.

Our system is founded on the notion that those who represent us will be answerable at fixed election intervals for their votes cast.  Posting this bill during lame duck is sneaking around that system, and demonstrates the utter disrespect that the majority shows for the public.  We just held an election, and by putting the vote off until the lame duck session, they are effectively inoculating the incoming representatives from responsibility for this extremely important vote.  It is a disgrace.  All outgoing legislators should simply refuse to cast a vote on this important measure, and leave it for the incoming legislators.

by Trochilus

wow... what nice ( or not so nice in some cases ) logical arguments...

let's try boiling this down though... s'pose you were handed a video of your spouse / child / significant other ( whatever the case may be ) being beaten to death on the sidewalk ( use your imagination ) because some stranger didn't like the clothes he/she was wearing... would anyone here feel differently?

beyond that... on the issue as to whether it is a deters more crime... if it doesn't deter more crime, than the worst that happens is the state kills murderers... if it does deter crime than you've probably saved countless more lives...

regardless... i say put it to a legit vote... ( oh... i'm also pro-choice btw... :P )

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets. - Will Rogers

As I stated previously, I nearly lost my father to an act of senseless violence when I was young.  While I thank God that he didn't die, I went through a period where we were not sure he would pull through.  He lost so much blood the doctors couldn't even get a pulse when they finally treated him. 

I had all the more reason to fall prey to blind racial hatred given the fact that he was not only assaulted by a black woman, but walked several blocks through a black neighborhood in Newark after he had been stabbed (you also have to appreciate the context - the early 1970s was a very racially charged period in Newark, with the riots still fresh in people's memories).  People shouted vile anti-white epithets at him and even tossed bottles in his direction as he summoned all his strength to reach an auto body shop where he knew the owner.  No one lifted a hand to help him as he staggered through the streets bleeding to death.  Believe me, it would have been easy at the tender age of 10 to give creedence to the lesser angels of contempt.   

As I've posted previously on this site, my wife is African.  Her children, who are now my children, are African.  There has never been nor will there ever be a place for hatred in my heart for anyone based on the actions of certain individuals.  The truly miraculous thing about what I went through is that it made me far more empathetic with those who have been oppressed based on their race.  When I see a person being marginalized or mistreated simply because his skin is a particular color, I think of what my father endured.  Racism is arguably the most pernicious evil on this planet.  I've tasted the bitter fruit it bears first hand. 

Forgiveness heals a shattered heart and creates a deeper, renewed capacity for compassion.  Revenge, as tempting as it may seem, ultimately causes self destruction.  I often shared my father's story with the young men I counseled who had been incarcerated in juvenile prison.  It was surprising enough to them that a white, politically well known, professionally successful lawyer would bother to visit them in prison to share the hope of Christ.  But something remarkable always happened when they heard what I had gone through.  They expected me to hate them because they themselves had committed equivalent acts of violence to other people's fathers, mothers, sisters and so on.  They were conditioned to expect that their negative actions would be met with a corresponding negative reaction.  They were absolutely stunned when they received grace.  More often than not, they often responded by letting their fierce guard down and allowing me entrance into places in their soul to which no one was privy. 

Suffering is the one universal bond we all share.  I would tell those who lost their loved ones in the V-Tech massacre the same thing I stated above.  Killing the man who murdered their children will neither bring their children back nor grant them closure.  The best thing they can do is devote themselves to leading a life that ensures this type of horrific event never happens again.  Show kindness to those cast out by society.  Extend grace to those who expect wrath.  Break the cycle of violence that inexorably perpetuates itself.  Only in this way will the deaths of their loved ones assume any semblance of meaning.           

Trochilus. 

While it is true that my personal religious convictions shape my opinion on this issue to a great extent, my opposition to the death penalty is also firmly rooted in my innate distrust of governments and those who tend to run them.  Those who man the helm of our state's government have habitually abused their authority and corrupted virtually every facet of the public sector.  Our state's highest court is proved itself utterly incompetent and patently biased by ignoring the plain language of a strictly constructed statute in order to allow Lautenberg to replace Toricelli on the ballot. The caliber of elected officals, political functionaries and judicial appointees in this state is so abyssmal that I could never in good conscience accord them sweeping power over matters of life and death (I am of the opinion that they have far too much power over our lives as it is).   Moreover, as I mentioned previously, history does not argue in favor of governments wielding this kind of power with unerring rectitude.  If anything, the state's power to put its citizens to death has accounted for unspeakable carnage. 

Add to this the fact that, despite advances in criminological technology, there still exist inadequate safeguards to ensure that capital crimes are tried fairly across the board.  I have served as assigned counsel to represent indigent defendants.  In one instance I had a co-defendant's counsel come up to me as we were about to go before the judge and ask me to fill him in on the details of the case.  As a matter of personal interest, I have perused appeals based on inadequate representation of counsel and found myself unnerved by the circumstances under which accused murderers were tried and sentenced. 

My faith in the fair administration of the death penalty was shaken to the core when in 2000, Illinois Republican Governor George Ryan freed 13 men who had been erroneously sentenced to death.  Immediately thereafter, Ryan placed a moratorium on the use of the death penalty and ultimately granted a blanket commutation for all death row inmates.  To place this number in proper perspective, up to that point a grand total of 12 men had been executed.  One of the men exonerated was just two days away from meeting his maker.  Upon leaving office in 2003, Ryan stated, "Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die. What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?"  He added that he felt he had no choice but to strike a blow in "what is shaping up to be one of the great civil rights struggles of our time."  Ryan also pardoned 4 death row inmates who had been TORTURED into confessing to crimes they didn't commit. 

Some may argue that advances in technology that have been employed to exonerate the wrongfully convicted will prevent any and all future such miscarriages of justice.  This view ignores the harsh reality that in certain instances critical pieces of potentially liberating physical evidence may be discarded or lost to spoliation.  Thus even the most prodigious technological advances may prove unable to exonerate the innocent.  And what guarantees exist that everyone sentenced to death will be able to avail themselves of these high tech get out of jail free cards?          

Further, my interaction with juvenile offenders instructs me that the threat of execution provides no deterrent.  Gang bangers actually earn their stripes in many instances by committing a murder.  It essentially amounts to an exercise in resume building by which they advance in the gang hierarchy.  Most of these young men don't contemplate a future.  They live from moment to moment in a frighteningly Darwinian environment.  For the most part, murder is not a rational act preceded by a careful balancing of risk and reward.  Thus, even the most punitive sanctions typically fail to prevent the taking of a life.  

By analogy, the DC gun control law provides the harshest penalties on the books for those possessing firearms.  Yet DC routinely mantains the highest rate of gun violence in the nation.  Obviously the deterrent effect of these laws is negligible.  And, yes, I have examined studies on both sides of the question as to whether the death penalty has any significant deterrent effect.  In fact, I used to employ them when campaigning to justify my pro-death penalty position.  At this point in my life, I am not sufficiently convinced that the death penalty has a deterrent effect significant enough to outwiegh factors militating against its use.  

As a soldier, I understand the concept of taking life to protect life.  Ultimately, there exists no  moral imperative to sacrifice oneself or one's fellow man in the face of imminent destruction.  Yet the death penalty is applied after the fact and, therefore, can never operate to prevent the taking of the life that has been lost.  It can only cede to government powers beyond its rightful jurisdiction and which all too often place innocent men at the feet of the gallows.  Based on pragmatism rather than personal piety, I oppose the death penalty and support sentencing those who commit cold blooded murder to life without ANY chance of parole.      

We live in times with incommensurate ideas often are situated right beside one another -- as a nation of immigrants, we've taken a decidedly anti-immigrant turn as of late; some Americans disdain for the French doesn't take into account we would have lost the Revolutionary War without them; and so on -- but I am equally baffled and nonplussed with some of Lord Xenu's replies and with Trochilus' bizarre, angry justifications for making a woman's reproductive system property of the state while at the same time argue for a limited, restrained federal and state government.

Xenu's weakest point in his argument is when he compares a social nicety, that is, congratulating a woman or couple on their pregnancy, with allotting personhood or constitutional status to a mass of cells, incapable of feeling pain and incapable of sustaining life on its own for months. If myopic thinking had its incarnation at any particular moment on this political site, it is with such moments like these from an otherwise rational person.

Further, the argument that "two consensual people" have intercourse and thus must take care of the consequences, falls flat on its head because the author has no sense of bearing of the cultural, social and material factors that decide and shape sexual intercourse, particularly amongs impoverished populations.  Social class produces individuals and environment makes decisions for them -- thus more poor persons, minorities, and other such groups have a disproportionate amount of unwanted pregnancies because of a variety of reasons (lack of adequate availablity of contraceptives, lack of knowledge and health resources, etc.). And I find it interesting that, in this instant, three men (Carroll, Trochilus, Lord Xenu) see fit to decide for a woman what she can and can't do with her body.

Trochilus' flawed argument again exposes the weakness that anti-choice conservatives have in arguing against abortion rights: They make their moralistic standard and definition of "life" extended for any and all persons. Their definition of what constitutes "life" is the only one that matters -- science, consensus, and reasoning be damned. We know that, according to the best science, the fetus doesn't feel pain in all probability until after the 20th week of pregnancy (a few scientists claim that fetuses feel no pain whatsoever, but this seems incorrect). Instead of researching the facts and getting a sense of alternate, non-supernatural agreements on "life," such conservatives build a wall of unreason and fundamentalism around their own beliefs; the actual woman, scientific research, and the fetus are left behind in this version of blind fundamentalism.

Of course, if Trochilus and Xenu don't believe in abortion as an option for women, then they and their partners should agree never to have one. But don't force your own moralistic standard upon the rest of the population.

Xenu and I actually agree on abolishing the death penalty, but we take different routes in getting to that shared stance. The death penalty violates basic laws of deceny, as the New Jersey Death Penalty Commission has found, and, in my opinion, provides too much power and capability in the hands of the state; there's good reason why the U.S. is one of the few first-world nations that continues this atrocious practice. By next week, one hopes, the Senate and Assembly will abolish this egregious practice, and the rest of the country will possibly follow.

Martin, 

You began your latest grammatically-challenged rant with this beauty –  “We live in times with incommensurate ideas often are situated right beside one another . . .” 

My temptation, of course, is to rhetorically ask, “What are you talking about?”  But moving on to the remainder of that amusing run-on “sentence” of yours, I noted that your mind had wandered off onto an irrelevant rant about immigration, and the French, before suddenly alighting on the outrageous claim that I had somehow postulated that the Government owns womens’ bodies! 

Please, go back and read my comment.  I did not take a position on abortion at all.  I was merely mockingly contrasting your frequently articulated position on that topic, vis à vis your position as expressed here on the death penalty.  They are incongruous.  That was my point.  Sorry you missed it. 

And, I also pointed out that you had again refused to address the issue I noted – the “life v. life” position raised by Messrs Sunstein and Vermeule.  You have ignored it again with this latest comment of yours.  One can only assume, therefore, that you will not address the thoughtful position of the professors because you simply don’t have an answer.  Or, is it that you have a response, but it makes no logical sense?  Gosh, Martin, that never seemed to stop you in the past!  

So far as your silly incantation regarding the need to obey the “laws of decency,” which you attributed to a position in the report of the death penalty Commission, please tell us where we are to go to obtain a copy of those laws?  The Commission forgot to tell us as well.  Do you have a citation?  Perhaps they are contained in a double-secret appendix to the Communist Manifesto, or some equally irrelevant progressive dogma?  

And, when Commission member, former Senator John Russo, signed on to that Report -- and that view -- how do you suppose he squared his new view with the fact that he was the author and prime sponsor of our current death penalty law when it was originally adopted back in 1982?  Was he not aware of his obligations to those so-called new fangled “laws of decency,” or do you suppose he was he just more likely to willy-nilly violate them back then? 

In that regard please note, Martin, that all legislators (and the Governor) are duty bound – by solemn oath – to support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of New Jersey.  Period.

Again, Martin, I come down on the side of protecting present and future victims of crime.  Study after study clearly demonstrate that the death penalty is a deterrent.

But you are obviously much more interested in protecting the Ambrose Harris’s and Jesse Timmendequas’s of this world.

Which raises one last rhetorical question for you:  What do you suppose the sponsors should nickname this capital punishment abolition statute?  Ambrose and Jesse's Law?  

Enough said.

by Trochilus