Posted by
Bert Chapman on Tuesday, June 12, 2007 4:48:02 PM
Recent years have seen an unfortunate resurgence in the activities and success of death penalty abolitionists. Thanks to the growing prevalence of DNA testing, numerous liberal journalism school activists, such as those at Northwestern University, have convinced themselves that it is their duty to "liberate" violent criminals from death row. This situation was made worse a few years ago when Illinois Governor George Ryan, smarting from a self-inflicted political corruption scandal, decided to "ease his soul" by effectively shutting down Illinois death penalty program. The high-handed sanctimony of European Union criminal justice policymakers who claim that capital punishment is barbaric makes matters worse and makes it impossible for nations desirous of admission to enter the "sanctified" EU if they have the death penalty in their criminal justice statutes.
While mistakes can be made in applying the death penalty to violent criminals they are rare. You can avoid the death penalty by not committing murder. It's really very simple but don't expect liberal abolitionist imbeciles to grasp elementary criminal justice and moral logic. The problem with the death penalty in the U.S. is not that it exists, but that it takes so incredibly long to implement executions. It can take decades and enormous rounds of appeals before the death penalty can be carried out.
Effective reform of U.S. death penalty laws should begin by eliminating appeals to the Supreme Court for non-federal crimes. If a burglar kills a liquor store clerk during a robbery their highest round of appeal should be to the governor of the state where the crime occurred. The federal courts do not need to be clogged with non-federal criminal trials. Only one round of appeals should be filed and states should get financial incentives such as criminal justice grants for carrying out executions in an expeditious manner. Organizations such as the ACLU and death penalty abolitionists individuals and organizations should not be allowed to file appeals for sentence commutation of convicted murderers sentenced to death. That should only be done by the defendant's attorneys if the defendant wishes to avoid execution.
Another thing to ask snide death penalty opponents is how much of your own money are you willing to pay to support a prisoner sentenced to death in lifelong imprisonment which includes feeding, health care, and various other services? The Indiana Dept. of Corrections website states that is currently costs $58.99 per day and $21,531.35 per year to keep an adult inmante incarcerated in a state correctional facility. The latest statistics I have for federal prisoner costs are $19,802 per inmate per year for federal fiscal year 2003. The 2003 federal figure is an 18.7% increase from 2002. I wonder how much this has gone up since then. Let's take the current Indiana figure of $21.535.35 and multiply it by forty years. If I've done my math correctly that adds up to over $861,000 dollars and that does not account for inflationary adjustments or court or legislative mandated prisoner rights perks that may occur during this time. Throw figures like this at death penalty abolitionists and see if they're willing to foot the bill. Ask them if they'd like to adopt a death row prisoner and use payroll deduction to directly subsidize their incarceration?
We wouldn't have so many prisoners on death row if we had a society that prized moral accountability, stable two parent marriages and families, and if our society valued self-control and responsibility. The best way to avoid the death penalty is simple: don't commit violent crimes. Unfortunately, that is probably to difficult a message for liberal death penalty abolitionist and ignoramus European Union bureaucrats to comprehend.