April 21^st

On a more somber note, today we consider the death penalty; most countries have abolished it; in Europe only Belarus retains it. It is so abhorred in most of Europe that countries there will not sell us the chemicals used in our death chamber’s lethal cocktails. Not a problem, Utah has decided to just shoot the culprit and the Federal government uses hanging; no chemicals are necessary.

In this country each state can decide whether or not to have the death penalty. When a crime is a federal offense then the federal government can seek the death penalty. This has happened recently in Massachusetts where the man who helped plant the bombs that killed four people and injured hundreds in the Boston Marathon faces the death penalty from a federal court in spite of the fact that Massachusetts has no death penalty. Now comes a conundrum: The culprit in this case is a Muslim and wants to be put to death because he will become a martyr and as a martyr his religious beliefs promise him great rewards in his afterlife. What are a few moments of pain to trade for an eternity of bliss? So does the government give him the martyrdom he craves or “mercifully” give him only life without parole?

China and most Muslim countries have no problem with the death penalty, nor are they particularly concerned with how it is administered. China simply shoots the culprit in the back of the head so that he falls forward into a grave, unless they want to harvest some of his organs in which case a knowledgeable surgeon is standing by. The Saudis normally behead the culprit with a sword, although sometimes they use a firing squad and rarely stone the victim to death. They have public executions and see the beheadings as a form of entertainment. Many different offenses merit a sentence of death. Most Muslim countries have the death penalty and many apply it generously. The Saudis are pushing upwards of a hundred executions so far this year.

Carrying out the death penalty in this country is about as expensive as a life sentence because of the lengthy appeal process and the increased expense of housing death row prisoners. Neither does the death penalty seem to be very effective in deterring crime; the murder rate in states with the death penalty has actually been higher than for non-death penalty states. There is also an enormous disparity among the states in the legal assistance to indigent people accused of capital crimes. This disparity is partially responsible for the fact that Texas has a very high rate of executions. The Texas legal system is widely different from that in other states particularly in the quality of legal counsel supplied to indigent people accused of capital crimes.

Then we have the problem of the FBIs unreliable analysis of hair samples: of 21 thousand comparisons made before year 2000 all were found to be unreliable. Then the government prosecutors got to decide whether or not to share that news with the defendant’s counsel; talk about stacking the deck! There are many other examples of laboratory failures which helped the prosecution and you can find them on the web. When people speak of “American Exceptionalism” I doubt that implementing the death penalty is what they have in mind.