Tuesday, April 10, 2012

FEWER MURDER VICTIMS BECAUSE A SILENT MAJORITY FEARS THE DEATH PENALTY

Those who oppose capital punishment usually include among their arguments that the death penalty does not deter crime. That is patently false because there is a silent majority out there that has contemplated killing someone but refrains from doing so for fear of the death penalty. The anti-death penalty crowd peddles phony statistics based on death row interviews. And they resort to using misleading crime statistics of states like Minnesota and Wisconsin - states with a relatively small crime-ridden urban population – to claim that murder rates are lowest in states without capital punishment.

Since the silent majority of those who have thought about killing someone is invisible, Greg Doyle believes that instead of playing the deterrence card, those of us who favor the death penalty should trump it with the case for a just punishment - "the condemned did not deserve to breathe among the living because of the heinous and evil nature of the crime committed."

Greg Doyle, ‘The Gadfly’, is a former police officer who is a prolific writer on faith. His father Jerry and I worked together on the Riverside Sheriff’s Department way back when, and his brother Jeff is the force behind PACOVILLA Corrections blog.

On PACOVILLA, Greg responded to THE DEATH PENALTY: REPUBLICANS VS. DEMOCRATS, CONSERVATIVES VS. LIB ERALS (4-9-12) with the following comments:

At the heart of much the anti-capital punishment argument is the weird notion that perhaps an innocent person might be killed in the process. And while there may have been an error in a very few cases, the process of becoming condemned to death row is laborious and requires an incredible number of hurdles a criminal defendant must achieve (in the act of murdering someone else) in order to qualify for death. Yet that still does not satisfy the anti-death penalty fanatics. They seem to ignore the viciousness and lack of empathy for the murdered victims in order to embrace the murderers, as if nothing vile had ever happened. It strips all responsibility from the State to do the one thing the State should do: mete ultimate justice by demanding the lives of the condemned in exchange for the life of their victims.

The question of “death penalty deterrence” is the straw man argument anti-capital punishment advocates have used as a ruse to sway public opinion and influence politicians. Capital punishment was never about deterrence. It has always been about meting a punishment so severe there would leave no doubt that the condemned did not deserved to breathe among the living because of the heinous and evil nature of the crime committed. If the State does not respond as the law demands, the value of life and obedience to the law suffer as a consequence. Has it not been evident in this country that life has less value?

And here is how I responded the The Gadfly’s comments:

Gadfly, I always value your comments. And I agree with you here except for one point. While you are correct about the duty to punish someone with death for a vicious murder, back in my day the death penalty was always sold as a deterrent, as it should have been, and as it should still be today.

The problem is that the anti-death penalty ‘researchers’ rely on asking those on death row whether or not they gave any consideration to the possibility of being sentenced to death. Of course, they are going to say ‘no’. The real truth lies in the fact that there are countless people who have contemplated killing someone but did not do so out of fear of getting caught and then having to face the possibility of being sentenced to death.

I am certain that there are some burglars, robbers and rapists out there who do not kill their victims for the same reason. Those that do kill their victims either do not give a shit or they believe that if they’re caught and sentenced to death, the sentence will never be carried out, what with all the endless appeals.

Here is what The Gadfly had to say about that:

Point well taken.

The problem of arguing the deterrent effect affirmatively, as I see it, is not really a matter of whether or not it works in minimizing murder. But it is difficult to prove, except by anecdotal evidence. By arguing down that path, it opens the door for research and opinion, and all the clap trap that goes with the passion of the anti-death crowd. It plays in their favor because it allows for irrational reasoning to seem rational through statistical data, which usually trumps anecdotal info.

However, if the argument in favor of death is simply a matter that the condemned has been deemed unworthy of living by law because of the acts committed, it is a harder row to hoe in arguing the acts themselves do not demand the harshest penalty possible. The issue rests in the realm of the law, instead of anecdotal probabilities of deterrence or statistical irrelevancy.

I do not disagree with your premise, but logic was discarded in our public school system long ago. Public opinion and mob rule have the upper hand at the moment, unfortunately. Your argument may be 100 percent correct, yet the audience is 85 percent distracted by the passions of the wacko activists and a very tainted media.

I would much rather argue that a condemned man who set fire to his victim’s after bludgeoning and raping them deserves death (while the law allowing capital punishment still stands) because the evil and heinous nature of his actions require the State to act accordingly, because no other punishment will do.

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