Current Events Round Up: Death Penalty Debate Heats Up

This week, the death penalty debate reignites as executions are committed, commuted and mulled over.

The 1,000th person was executed (Reuters) since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne weigh in on the debate with Robinson questioning how clemency and executions can be fair in this age of celebrity. Should "Tookie" Williams be executed for his murders or granted clemency because of his repentance? Robinson thinks the latter, but wants to see the death penalty gone for everyone. See: No Special Break for Tookie (Washington Post)

Dionne expresses similar sentiments but comments on "Virginia Gov. Mark Warner's decision this week to grant clemency..." The case discussed here is somewhat different as DNA evidence was destroyed by a court clerk, making any potential appeal or exonerating evidence all but impossible. It's a good read and a brief history of the political climate in which the death penalty debate has been waged. See: The Politics of Punishment (Washington Post)

I've had discussions about the death penalty with friends who are advocates of it and I will admit that on purely philosophical/theoretical grounds, a solid argument can be made for the death penalty. The theoretical assumptions behind those arguments, however, don't hold up in the real world. For one thing, people make mistakes. If a single innocent person is killed that is one too many and unfortunately the number is higher than one.

Mistakes, however, aren't the only issue. How do we take into account mental ability? Age or maturity? Should the crime equal the punishment regardless of context? Very few thinking people would allow for no extenuating circumstances. Yet, in a courtroom the very nature of a capital case stirs deep emotions and a good attorney knows how to incite anger and outrage in those jurors given the daunting task of sentencing a person to death. Oh, and if a person is against the death penalty, that person won't sit on a capital case, the prosecutors assure that.

The real world is just too messy and complex for the theoretical arguments to ever apply to reality. A person should absolutely be held accountable for their crimes, that is just. The death penalty, however, allows for no mistakes, no lapses in judgment, no subjectivity. We are just not capable of applying the exacting standards necessary to every single person who stands before a judge. That is, unfortunately, a matter of being a fallible human being.

That brings me to one last point - I don't ever want to put a person in the position of having to make that grave decision, or be in that position myself. Governors and the president all have the ability to commute sentences, prosecutors have the ability (within sentencing guidelines) to ask for it, juries are given the responsibility to sentence a person to death. While there is some choice in the matter for all those people, it is a monumental one. I would never want to face the outside pressure to kill someone. Neither would I want to decide whose sentence gets commuted and whose gets committed. Rarely do we think about the mental, emotional and spiritual weight placed upon those people responsible for the executions, especially in the case where an innocent is killed. To me, abolishing the death penalty is as much a mercy to those people as the inmates on death row.

I would hope that some day soon the United States would choose to end its use of capital punishment. It may be a state by state effort, but in the interest of justice I think it is necessary. Not so much because the punishment itself is unjust, although I have my doubts, but moreso because its application will always be.