The StuSie

A Battle of Wits with the Unarmed

It is a curious feature of modern American culture that one no longer needs any semblance of rationality to put forth an argument that will enjoy widespread support. There are many examples of this and we have touched on a few in the annals of this blog. Intelligent Design is one, but the death penalty is a better one. This is a piece of policy so devoid of reason that it makes the missile defense shield look like universal healthcare, and yet it is supported by a majority of Americans. 65% to be exact. Guess what? I'm not making this up either, 75% of Americans think that "God helps those who help themselves" is from the bible. Worse yet, 12% of americans think that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. Funny at first, sad when you let it sink in. I have a feeling it's the same people answering both surveys.

As Pfarrad has noted, the U.S. performed it's 1000th execution on December 3rd of this year when North Carolina shoved Kenneth Boyd off the mortal coil. In a press release on that day, Bush reaffirmed his support for the death penalty, reasoning that it "ultimately it helps save innocent lives." I am now officially in the business of making arguments, and as arguments go, this one is phenomenally, monumentally, catastrophically, galactically flawed. Here's some news for you, when inmates are paroled, they're given a score based on their likelihood to reoffend. Your average rapist gets a high score if they're still in the "active age group" (between 25-45) because statistically speaking, they're probably going to do it again if they get the chance. (Incidentally, after 45 your standard rapist tends to loose interest, but a pedophile will keep on truckin') But by comparison, you average murderer gets a very low score. Why is this you ask? The reason is because most murderers are murderers because they killed someone they knew. They rarely repeat offend because the person who pissed them off is already dead. There are of course some people who kill strangers, but they are in the extreme minority and if we're dealing with statistics they don't skew the numbers very much. So given the choice between a low risk of somebody dying and an absolute certainty that someone will die, 38 out of 50 states in the U.S. choose the latter, because ultimately it helps save lives. You follow that? Me neither.

Stemming from this first argument and intimately connected with Herr Bush's down-home sense of fair play is the idea that the death penalty is a valid deterrent. Again, while we're critiquing arguments, this one stinks like a burning house made of dogshit and stuffed with dead chickens. Never, in the history of all things ever, has anyone seriously thought to themselves, "I'm gonna kill that fucker...oh no, wait a minute, we have the death penalty in this state, damn." Not only is this straight-up not true, but the trend suggests the opposite. Curiously, death penalty states have higher murder rates than non-death penalty states, and that is not just within the U.S. When the U.S. is compared to other countries that don't even entertain the death penalty, it starts to become obvious how ridiculous the argument for it is.

There are two other common arguments that the pro-death penalty crowd like to throw around, and I will now lay them bare in all their mindlessness. The first is the ubiquitous "if [the victim] was in my family, I'd want the guy to fry too." Pfarrad was confronted with this inspired piece of logic and I'm assuming he feels the same way about it I do. Just what the fuck are you proposing? That society should make its most important decisions by imagining what it would do in a blind emotional rage? Yeah, let's go with that, sounds good. By extension we should draft traffic ordinances by imagining what we'd want them to be if we were driving drunk. The whole point of a "civilized" society is that decisions about justice and equity are delegated to the collective with the idea that cooler heads will prevail. If we have the luxury of making a rational decision based not only on "morality" but upon economics, statistics, precedent and reason, why then would we choose to abandon all of these and pick what we think we'd want if were grieving and incoherent?

Finally, there are those among us who continue to think that the death penalty is somehow a cheaper alternative to life in prison, as I believe Pfarrad already pointed out, this is a patently false. It is far more expensive to execute someone than to keep them in prison for life because of the enormous cost of the appeals process. But then, I guess the same crowd would argue that we should ditch that, I mean if they're not guilty, why are they in prison...

posted by Der Staubsauger @ 19:25