But like most people I’m a mutt, with beliefs that don’t exactly jibe with the ideals of my party. I think the Estate Tax is unfair. I resent illegal immigrants for circumventing our immigration system. And I don’t think the Death Penalty is always a bad thing.
I know, I know, they’re going to revoke my DNC voter card.
Just today I learned that Ingmar Guandique, the man convicted of killing Congressional intern Chandra Levy, was sentenced to 60 years in prison. I don't know how Chandra's parents feel about that sentence, but I would be completely, thoroughly unsatisfied.
If anyone killed someone I loved I would want to see them fry. I'm not proud of that, but I'm also not ashamed to admit that the idea that the man who did it would get to keep breathing would haunt me every day of my life.
After someone has done something as horrible as murder, the only real question should be, Is there anything the killer can do or give that will offer some sense of justice to the people he has hurt? And I do mean anything. If the family would get some measure of comfort or closure from watching the man who killed their son/daughter/mother/father/whatever die, then that's what should happen. But I will say that the family should have a lot of say in this.
So, that's why I'm in favor of the Death Penalty.
Unfortunately, the shy but very persistent thinky person in me knows there is a problem with this way of dealing with convicted murderers: not everyone convicted of a crime is guilty. Damn you, Thinky Doug, you ruin everything.
The Innocence Project has been paying attention to this kind of thing, and notes that there have been 266 (and counting) post-conviction exonerations, just since 1989. 17 of those people were sitting on death row.
Maybe even more shocking is this little tidbit:
“In more than 25 percent of cases in a National Institute of Justice study, suspects were excluded once DNA testing was conducted during the criminal investigation (the study, conducted in 1995, included 10,060 cases where testing was performed by FBI labs).”
That means that a full 25 percent of the time, the police were wasting time going after the wrong person. Who knows how many of those people would have been put on trial or even convicted were it not for DNA testing.
Further, all of this addresses only those cases where DNA evidence was available, and where it was allowed to be tested. The actual numbers are absolutely higher, and there are still an undetermined number of people sitting in our prisons for crimes they didn’t commit.
So, given all of this, here’s the real issue: How many innocent people are we willing to kill?
If there is no doubt, and you have someone who murdered someone in the presence of a large crowd of witnesses, and he openly admits to being guilty, I say let him fry. But those cases will be a very rare exception--so rare in fact that I wonder if it’s worth keeping a system in place to handle them.
Revenge appeals to the basest instincts in us, and removing the death penalty offers us deeply unsatisfying resolutions to the most heinous crimes. I get it. But until there is a foolproof system that can guarantee that only the deserving will die, it seems deeply irresponsible to keep killing people. Dontcha think?
Edit: Just today, a few days after putting up this post, I found this story, in which Chandra Levy's mother said she wasn't 100 percent sure that they convicted the right guy. Make of that what you will.
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