...And We'll All Be Blind

This week New Jersey, our neighbor to the south, took on a very weighty issue and abolished the death penalty -- making it the first state to do so since capital punishment was deemed permissible in 1976 by the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a landmark move, and one that should be followed by all states who currently have capital punishment, for the following reasons:

First of all (and most importantly), the criminal justice system in the U.S. is not fool-proof. Every year we hear about criminals being exonerated and released after so many years due to new evidence, new witnesses, or new technology. However, once a prisoner is executed, there is no going back -- there is no pardon, there is no appeal, there is no new evidence that can help them. The possibility of executing an innocent person is far too great.

Second, the death penalty does not act a deterrent, and there is an enormous amount of data to support this point.

Third, common sense might tell you that simply killing someone for their crime would be cheaper than keeping them in a prison until they die, but actually the opposite is true: abolishing the death penalty saves money. Over the long term, incarcerating a prisoner for the remainder of their natural life costs taxpayers a fraction of what it would cost to execute the same inmate.

Fourth, in this country we generally punish people so that they can learn what they should not be doing. But putting someone to death does not teach them anything -- it kills them. The object of putting someone to death is to protect the general population from the harm that this person may cause, however this is also accomplished by putting them in prison for the rest of their life (and at a much lower cost to the taxpayer).

In the second presidential debate of 1988, former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis was asked a question about whether he would favor the death penalty in the event his wife were raped and murdered. His response was that he had always been against the death penalty, and he backed up his statement with facts and figures showing that the death penalty was not a deterrent. What a dumb thing to do. I'm not married, but if I were, and my wife were raped and murdered, I wouldn't want her attacker put to death by the state -- I'd probably want to do it myself. However, this is precisely why we make these laws and decisions when we are calm and clear-headed.

No one has the moral authority to decide who lives or dies -- if they think they do, then their mental status is no more advanced than those they want killed.

And for those who think New York State has capital punishment, it does not. The statute that was signed into law in 1995 was ruled unconstitutional in 2004, and that ruling was upheld about 2 months ago.