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| | The Death Penalty in America
In much of the world, including most of those “western” nations we in America like to consider our peers, capital punishment is considered barbaric. While Americans decry the status of human rights in so many other countries, and send young idealists to Africa, or Cambodia, or South America, international organizations in other countries send their young lawyers here, to America, to work to oppose our human rights problem. |
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< | Of course, there are those in this country that also oppose this practice, but why is there not a more publicized debate, a la gay marriage or abortion? Why does it receive such relatively little scrutiny? |
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> | Of course, there are those in this country that also oppose this practice, but why is
there not a more publicized debate, a la gay marriage or abortion?
Why does it receive such relatively little scrutiny?
You really think the
death penalty in America gets little scrutiny?
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| | Public Support
The simple answer is public opinion. As of 2009, 65% of Americans support the death penalty, and state legislators know this. The Supreme Court also knows this. In Gregg v Georgia, the case that reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the Court noted that in determining the constitutionality of the practice, they must look to the “contemporary public attitudes” that reflect “evolving standards of human decency.” |
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> | You are missing the headline on your public opinion data. The 65% support level is a low compared to the support levels measured in public opinion polls in the mid-1980s, when I was clerking, or for a decade after. Take a look at historical collections of polling data to see what has happened to public opinion since the exoneration campaigns began. |
| | When the UK banned capital punishment for murder in 1969, it did so against public opinion. In 1994, when Parliament was to vote on reinstating it, some reports had public support as high as 75%. They voted it down.
The same is not going to happen here. In order to change the law, advocates must change public opinion. |
| | Last year Philip Cook, of Duke University, published a study conducted to estimate the costs of the death penalty in North Carolina. He estimated that if the state had abolished the death penalty, they would have saved over $21 million over the previous two years. Likewise, a 2008 study by The Urban Institute found that Maryland taxpayers had paid $186 million dollars more since 1978 because of capital punishment. That same year, the state senate in California commissioned a study of its criminal justice system which estimated the additional annual cost of its death penalty program at $137.7 million, and that a system with a maximum sentence of life without parole would drop this number to $11.5 million. Similar data has come out of other states as well. |
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> | Yes, but these are tiny numbers for state budgets in the billions, and comparable costs can be estimated for things the public would consider frivolous, and be delighted to cut out long before capital punishment would go for budgetary reasons. |
| | Practical Appeal
Capital defense attorneys are usually state appointed and supported. Juror selection is more time consuming and costly. The trial is followed by a series of automatically triggered appeals, which can stretch on for years. Capital punishment systems are an incredible economic drain on many states (see California) that cannot exactly afford to waste money. |
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> | Prosecutors are elected
officials, and if the voters think they're wasting too much money
charging capitally when they should seek lesser penalties, they can
express that view. I doubt there's a prosecutor in the country who
worries that he'll be thrown out of office for too much spending on
trying to execute the "worst" murderers. |
| | Popular support for the death penalty makes opposing it an uphill battle, and principled negative attacks on capital punishment may be more polarizing than effective. It might be more persuasive to shift focus from abstract arguments based on morality and human rights, to increased empirical study and a positive discussion of the practical economic impact of alternatives. Though not the newest argument, in today's struggling economy, it may have become the strongest. |
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> | "May have become" are
weasel words for "I haven't the slightest evidence that this is true,
but I'll say it anyway." |
| | Conclusion
Taking this path, maybe we can avoid trying to topple the beliefs of the “morally acceptable” crowd, and instead appeal to that section of America that might be persuaded to consider alternatives. If what the current system might be doing to innocent defendants doesn't give people pause, maybe what it is doing to them will. |
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> | A conclusion about
"maybe" shows that the preceding argument doesn't have much purchase
even with the author. Because you haven't gone inside the survey
data, you don't have any reason to think cost is a substantial
motivating factor: it has little effect on peoples' desire for long
incarceration, even when the much larger costs of incarceration
policy begin to take substantial bites out of other public services.
If there is something in the survey data that shows this is a
reasonable strategy, you should be able to find it. If there isn't,
you should at least have answers for some of the obvious
objections. |