Eliminate the death penalty which is brutal and wrong

June 10, 2009
Eliminate the death penalty, which is brutal and wrong
People tend to be ambivalent about the death penalty. The gruesome
details of an execution, its ghoulish ritual and antiseptic
thoroughness are revolting, even though many sensitive and sensible
people favor it. Every time we read about another heinous crime
committed with the exquisite cruelty of some hellish monster it is
almost impossible not to wish him to be gone from this earth.

Yet, there are reasons to eliminate the death penalty. And it should
be remembered, that a criminal does not go free simply because he
isn't killed. Who would prefer to spend the rest of his life in a
cage, regimented to the last detail as the decades drone on, never to
have normal social contact with others, to an expeditious execution?

As an execution can be delayed almost indefinitely with appeals,
writs and whatnot, it does not appear imminent until near the end of
the line. John Wayne Gacy said on the way to his execution that he
did not believe it would happen. He had had so many delays and
reprieves that final doom had become unreal.

The greatest price we pay for the death penalty is the execution of
innocent men, and sometimes women. (There is serious doubt to this
day about the guilt of Barbara Graham, about whom the movie "I Want
to Live" was made). This is true not simply in some rare instance,
but with horrifying frequency. Not long ago in Illinois alone 13 men
were released from death row on the strength of DNA evidence showing
their innocence. Nationwide, since 1973, 133 prisoners under the
death sentence have been exonerated and released by virtue of proof
of innocence. To its credit, Florida leads the nation with 22 such
exonerations.

But DNA exoneration is not the whole of the matter. How many other
innocent men are executed for crimes wherein DNA could neither prove
nor disprove guilt? There are many, even hundreds, of innocent men on
death row. And the guilty ones remain loose, free to work their
unspeakable horrors on new victims, undeterred by the death penalty,
and casting doubt on it as a deterrence, which is its principal
justification.

It certainly does deter the dead convict, but does it deter others
who do not expect to be caught and therefore do not consider what
might happen to them if they are? Statistics show no positive
correlation between the death penalty or its abolition and the
incidence of crime.

One effect of the death penalty is the refusal by countries around
the world to extradite persons to the United States if they might
face the death penalty. They should not be criticized for that. Just
as we have our social and legal policies, they have theirs. But here,
too, as in the cases of wrongful convictions, the guilty go free.

Execution is brutal and cannot be made into anything less. It puts
life into the hands of sometimes corrupt and excessively ambitious
prosecutors and, yes, sometimes even the police themselves, who have
been known to withhold or even falsify evidence.

Governments have no business killing people except in war or self-
defense where it may be an unavoidable incidence of something else.
The death penalty should be eliminated.

Richard W. Metz is a retired attorney who lives on Sanibel.