The death penalty is too expensive

Great Debates
81

I would disagree with you that it’s still worth it. If we accept your $1 billion annual total (which may or may not be a reasonable approximation, I don’t know), it’s not like that cost is being spread among everyone, it’s going to fall hardest on a county. Generally speaking, the county authorities prosecuting a capital case have to decide whether to seek the death penalty, and the cost comes out of the county’s budget. If the cost exceeds their budget, the state government generally has some type of fund or apparatus in place to reimburse the county. If I live in Bumfuck County and the annual budget gets wiped out because the death penalty is sought in the only murder case to occur in the county in the last 20 years, I’m not happy. If I live in State X, and a desirable state program gets cut because the money got spent on a single death penalty case in Bumfuck County, I’m not happy.

It all comes down to the question of whether the assumed deterrence and retributive effects of the death penalty are worth the increased cost over just locking someone up for life. I’m not convinced it represents that much of a deterrent or a form of retribution.

82

Don’t lifers appeal their sentences too? Don’t they spend the rest of their lifes trying to get out of prison? How many times is the average life-in-prison sentence appealed and how much does it cost. Not to mention housing/feeding/clothing people as long as they are alive.

There was a case here was a guy was sentenced to life without parole for killing is wife and two sons because she was going to leave him and take the children. The guy filed lawsuit after lawsuit before dropping dead of a heart attack. Not just appealing his sentence, but against prison personal and conditions.

83

Now I think you’re playing a game. You’ve said time and again that the Constitution shows that the death penalty was considered permissible at the time of its writing.

Now you seem to be denying that there is any specific text in the Constitution pertaining to the death penalty.

84

Sure, they appeal, but there’s no guarantee that the appellate court will agree to review their cases. I know in Illinois that death penalty cases are automatically appealed to the state supreme court, and they have pretty broad discretion to examine and reverse convictions. Death penalty cases also generally result in habeas petitions.

85

Not at all. It goes back to your counter example of the 6th Amendment. Counsel is a specifically guaranteed right. Execution is not a specifically guaranteed power of the state. It also isn’t specifically unconstitutional, unless it is done without due process - hence the individual has a right not to be executed or imprisoned without due process.

Now that certainly is evidence, and very strong evidence IMHO, that the death penalty was considered constitutional in the minds of the drafters of the Bill of Rights. But it is the 8th that determines what penalties are allowed, and what aren’t, and the drafters intended that penalties would not be allowed if they were “cruel and unusual.” Otherwise, and if not prohibited elsewhere in the constitution, they would be OK for the state to impose.

Now, I think the overwhelming majority of us would agree that this is conclusive evidence that the DP was considered constitutional at that time. But punishments aren’t made constitutional - the point of the Bill of Rights is (predominately) to list what the government cannot do to individuals. And it says it cannot punish them for crimes without due process; and that no punishment can be “cruel and unusual.” To read the fifth as enshrining a power for the state to execute individuals, absent a constitutional amendment, is a misinterpretation of what the Bill of Rights actually does. What the fifth says, and what all good textualists (sic) shoud read it as saying, is what the text means on its face… if you are going to punish someone for a crime, give them due process. At that time, one of the available, constitutional punishments was execution. There is nothing in this that logically prevents the 8th, which defines how a punishment shall be deemed to be unconstitutional, and does so with a standard which both on its face, and in case law such as the Warren quote above, demands comparison with prevailing social mores and practices, from being used to rule that, given societal changes, capital punishment is no longer constitutional.

We aren’t there. I don’t know when, or if, we will be. But it is a perfectly logical, consistent, and dare I say it textually accurate interpretation of the Bill of Rights that produces this result.

86

Do you think the Constitution gives the government the power of eminent domain?

87

I honestly don’t know. It makes me VERY uncomfortable, certainly, but I would have to look closer at it before making a call as to whether it is unconstitutional.

88

No, it isn’t. ANd I find it very distressing that in a thread I began to decry the death penalty I’m in here fighting in favor of it… in a sense.

It’s true that there’s no line in the Constitution that specifically says, “The Congress shall have the power to impose death as a criminal penalty, and it shall not be considered cruel and unusual punishment.”

But it’s an obvious and universal maxim of legal construction that laws be read together, in pari materia, giving full effect to each portion. The fact that death is explicitly mentioned as a possible penalty in the same set of amendments as the language forbidding cruel and unusual punishment, and mentioned in a subsequent amendment 80 years later with a simialr lack of disclaimer, admits to no other reasonable explanation. It would be as reasonable to say that Congress cannot legally fund battleships, because “raise and maintain a Navy” does not necessarily mean battleships but could have meant only cruisers and destroyers.

89

That Navy example is a totally different kettle of fish. That is about the interpretation of a single provision over time. What I am talking to is the interpretation of two interacting provisions, one of which very specifically is worded to include a consideration of cultural standards and practices.

I simply don’t accept either that the obvious meaning of the text “cruel and unusual punishment” is a definition frozen in time, nor that such was the intent of the drafters of the Bill of Rights. To claim that strikes me as a cruel and unusual abuse of the English language, and of legal construction.

90

Well, here’s the Fifth Amendment:

So the actual text it can’t be taken WITHOUT JUST COMPENSATION. By your logic, villa, a court could find that even though it says that, maybe it means that the government can’t constitutionally take private property at all.

91

Put it in the context of another constitutional provision that states when a taking is constitutional or not, based on a standard that is, on its face, changing through time, and I’ll have a think whether that changes my position or not.

92

No one in this thread is saying that the phrase is frozen in time. I have no problem with your assertion that the phrase didn’t prevent hanging in 1800 but prevents it now.

Where that logic fails, however, is when you place it against the plain text of the Constitution itself. We can say that “cruel and unusual” must be interpreted with the meaning of the era and changes over time, but we cannot say that it forbids what another part of the Constitution explicitly permits. If we could, we would be overriding the plain text with our unwritten interpretation. That cannot be, if the text is to have any meaning at all.

93

Jackpot!

One could construct an argument in which the Tenth Amendment (The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people) may some day be felt to issue total protection to one’s personal property. Seeing as how the Fifth Amendment doesn’t actually say, “the government may take private property!” but instead sets limits on it, we would get into another absurd situation in which various parts of the Constitution are being reinterpreted to blot out other parts.

94

That one does. Isn’t “…for public use…” a standard that has changed over time? At one time it was held to refer only to actual public ownership: we need a road here or a dam there, so we’re taking your land and paying you for it, whther you like it or not.

Now “public use” means that it can be used for some privately owned project, like a shopping mall, which is held to benefit the public by its existence.

95

The takings argument is a good one. Let me think on it for a little…

My gut instinct is that the public use arguments put forward recently - takings for private “public” projects are pretty flawed and go against the clear meaning of the term “public use.”

But it deserves longer consideration.

96

I’m pro-Death Penalty, and I have to say I find the cost argument to be rather unpersuasive. I won’t bother to go into why I support it, since it’s rather convoluted and, frankly, irrelevant, but it really comes down to whether the Death Penalty is just or it is not and how much we, as a society, value justice. I consider the Death Penalty to be just and I also consider justice to be one of the key elements to a stable society; as such, lest the Death Penalty is so cost prohibitive that more valuable elements cannot be fulfilled, then it just doesn’t make sense to use that as reason to reign it in for those for whom the first two pieces hold true. In my opinion, even with the current economic crisis, the value of justice still makes it worthwhile.

That said, I do agree that the cost of the Death Penalty is unreasonably high, but it’s really just a reflection of a bloated justice system because EVERYTHING is too expensive, the Death Penalty is just the most expensive part, as it should be. I think finding ways to limit the overall cost of the justice system is the best way to approach the problem, like reducing prosecution and imprisonment of non-violent drug offenders and finding ways to put reasonable limits on frivilous lawsuits and appeals.

97

Does the death penalty provide more justice or better justice than life without parole? If it is better, how much more should we be willing to pay to seek it?

98

I don’t want to sidetrack the discussion, since I don’t think why I support the Death Penalty is necessarily relevant. However, to answer your question, I consider Justice to be a pretty black and white sort of issue. That is, something is either just, or it’s not; there aren’t cases where one situation is more just than another.

That said, there may or may not exist gray areas where there’s disagreement about when the Death Penalty is just or if Life without Parole is just, but that’s the purpose of the justice system, to determine guilt and assign a just sentence. However, I definitely believe there are situations where the Death Penalty is just and Life without Parole is not just, thus the difference in cost is irrelevant unless the difference in cost inhibits a more important social value. That is, the difference in cost never makes Life without Parole just in a case where the Death Penalty is just, or vice versa.

All I’m saying is that there is a possibility that it may become cost prohibitive if a higher value is threatened, but I think we’re very far from that case, even now, so we should be willing to pay whatever the cost up to that point. However, I consider justice to be every bit as important of a value to our society as virtually any other, so I don’t see that possibility occuring unless our society is literally on the brink of collapsing, at which point I doubt the cost difference has any real meaning.

99

In what way is killing someone “just?” What benefit is realized by it?

100

I think we had this discussion in other DP threads, but I’ll see if I can reiterate it clearly. First, I hold the following two things as true; if you disagree with either of these, then you won’t agree with my conclusion and we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

  1. We have certain rights, of which the right to life is the most valuable. In fact, because no other right has any meaning without the right to life (ie, what good is freedom of speech or property rights if you’re dead), I hold that the value of the right to life is more valuable than all other individual rights combined.

  2. Justice is an equitable forfeiture of the rights of the criminal when compared to the rights of of the victim that were violated. I specifically say equitable because it doesn’t necessarily have to be the same right; it’s purpose is to establish a balance, not a literal eye-for-an-eye approach. To generalize to modern society, we have agreed through tradition, law, and other means, that generally most crimes can equitably punished by through fines, a forfeiture of property, incarceration, a forfeiture of freedom, or both.
    So, that said, I think this does a good job for accounting for virtually every crime. I think it’s also vastly preferable to the literal eye-for-an-eye approach because the purpose is to, in a sense, establish an equilibrium, thus an inhumane punishment like a beating, even if it is the direct eye-for-an-eye punishment can be foregone for something in line with modern values. Further, it allows us the opportunity to punish crimes that wouldn’t have a direct eye-for-an-eye punishment, like rape, kidnapping, theft, vandalism, etc. And, though it’s not directly relevant, this is also the reasoning why I don’t believe in so-called victimless crimes like drug usage.

Anyway, that does a great job in every case except one, which is murder. Because life is more valuable than the comibination of all other individual rights, it is impossible to assign an equitable finite fine and/or prison term; it’s not extraordinarily difficult, it’s impossible. As such, there remains only one suitable right that can be forfeited, and that’s the right to life of the criminal. Thus, in a case of murder, the only just punishment is the Death Penalty.
You also ask what benefit we realize from it? It’s not something that’s so easily quantified because, for me, it starts getting into philosophical areas. I believe that by not holding steady to the ideals of justice as a fundamental pillar of a stable society, that it has the potential to begin the unravellings of society. I’m not trying to make a slippery slope argument, but I would argue that a lack of dedication to justice in the specific case of murder, or any other case for that matter, is tantamount to a lack of dedication to justice as a whole.

Further, regardless of your religious beliefs (or lack there of), there’s a general concept of the golden rule, karma, “what goes around comes around”, in virtually every culture, and certainly present in ours. It’s a concept that encompasses a natural sense of balance, and it always encorporates a sense of balance such that if you do evil deeds, it will come back to you. I envision justice as very much the same way and that it is a fundamental responsibility of society to maintain that balance, and that a society that does not maintain that balance will not remain stable.

Hence, justice is not a means to an end, like establishing order, getting revenge, or crime prevention. Justice is the ends in and of itself; thus, the benefit that is realized by a just sentence, even the Death Penalty, is justice itself.