"Thou Shalt Not Kill"
not
"Thou Shalt Not Kill (unless you are really angry and seek revenge)"
Contrary to the article's headline subheading - "Everything you think you know about the death penalty is wrong", I was aware of many of the injustices mentioned in the article. I would suggest using a more apropos text like: "Undisclosed Consequences of Current Death Penalty Practices".
2
Trouble with being against the death penalty is that some people deserve it.
17
Murder to pay for a cap and gown? Really? Cool story.
People who will believe anything aren’t worth believing.
4
Frankly we should use it more often. Child abusers. Sex offenders, etc. If you're wired wrong and will always be a threat to society... why not?
5
None of this explains why the death penalty is inappropriate for the worst killers out there -- Mohammed Atta (had he survived), Timothy McVeigh, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer. Those who are guilty beyond all doubt, who committed multiple cold blooded murders intentionally and without regret, and who maximized the suffering they caused deserve to be executed. Forget about deterrence, mistake, and abuse of government power. The most heinous of crimes merit the most heinous of punishments. If you have compassion for any of these murderers, you truly are a bleeding heart.
13
According to the Hard Left, nobody who ever killed a few dozen human beings should die himself but life the life of Riley in his own cell safe from the world.
Please try to sell this to some small, more easily controlled population, America-haters. After decades of effort, you are still losing the argument.
The worst effects of this progressive-socialist movement is the disappearance of sodium thiopental, the safest knock-out drug for surgical patients ever developed; it doesn't even reduce bloodflow and is gone in minutes.
But political advocates with oligarch money have made it go away until a Real Leader restores it to the developed West in a few more years.
4
i thought that before trump america was a civilised country... i forgot... a country with capital punishment is not civilised
11
No one can take the life of another. Some people probably deserve to die...it's just that no one, no person and no state, is entitled to do the deed. As a society, we must be consistent on this.
14
If President Trump wants the death penalty for those who kill cops will he also advocate the death penalty for cops who kill unarmed citizens?
25
A list of countries by the most executions in 2016: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, United States, Somalia Bangladesh. Please leave this medieval fraternity, America: you are judged abroad by the company you keep.
39
Call it what it really is. Government-sponsored ritual murder.
17
There are plenty of clear-cut murders in this gun crazy country with direct evidence, to include video, to send the killer(s) to the executioners block! Problem is the murderers live on for years and years with nonsense appeals instead of getting the Justice they so deserve!
6
The only executtion in my state was in 1851, it would be horrendously expensive to institute the death penalty when Wisconsin has so many real needs, and it would solve nothing that life in prison without parole doesn't already solve. We might as well try to hold an Olympics and a World's Fair at the same time if we were going to spend one penny on that.
6
Why do people who are pro life support the death penalty?
19
The "Menendez Brothers" (I killed my parents so have pity on orphan me) argument. Abolitionists won't allow the timely execution of the convicted, so both the cost of the process and the (occasional) maturation and growth of the killer work in favor of opposition.
Why hasn't Dzokhar Tsarnaev been executed. It is 6 years since his Boston Marathon murders. He had experienced defense counsel. We have all actually seen him place the bomb under the mailbox which blew up 20 seconds later.
For those against capital punishment, focus your efforts on the legislatures, maybe you can convince them to repeal the law. But don't get on your high moral horse and do everything to frustrate the lawful executions of those convicted!
7
for any supporter of the death penalty, one question:
how many guilty people executed would it take to balance out you yourself being executed in spite of you being innocent?
18
Not one comment on the sexism of the death penalty.
Women are on death row at a rate of 1/7
Yet, rarely do we ever carry out for women.
Nor do we hear than men get 63% more jail time for the same first time offense.
Toxic feminism is sexist.
6
Quite a challenging subhead to this article. Everything we know about the subject is wrong, eh? You mean they don't die?
2
Of course a civilized country needs the death penalty.
If not, you force citizens to handle justice themselves or be forever tortured.
5
I dreamed I saw Clarence Darrow. Although, what I know about American prisons, maybe death is preferable. But the death penalty is a horrible way to find justice. Stop this barbaric custom AND make yours prisons more human.
8
Gimme a rabid pro-lifer and I bet, in the same breath, you'll find them equally enthusiastically pro-death penalty and pro-assault weapons.
Never mind that Jesus would surely never have condoned capital punishment! With the exception of Belarus, no European country allows the death penalty. Even Russia has (at least, theoretically) banned it!
If you are pro-life, you should be pro everyone's life, at whatever nominal cost.
11
On the other hand, North dakota, a deeply red state, abolished the death penalty for almost all crimes in 1915 and never looked back.
8
“There is no evidence that the death penalty deters.”
Really? Ever heard of an executed killer who killed again? How many more innocent people have Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy murdered since their executions?
5
To begin with, the subtitle. Just what do you think you know about what I think I know?
1
Allow me to refer you to another NYT article in this same edition, and let you make the call about "Christians" who say they value life.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/us/knoxville-pastor-grayson-fritts.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
2
One of the most powerful articles about the death penalty was written by Kathy Garcia, a supporter of the death penalty, and a conservative. A close family member of hers was murdered. You can read it at http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/uncategorized/2010/03/28/death-penalty-hurts-not-helps-families-of-murder-victims/
1
Of course, Mr. Schultz is correct, the death penalty serves no purpose whatsoever. With the one exception- political purposes. Like many issues, it is exploited by politicians for getting votes. Ridiculous country that we are, some people go for that sort of thing. Very oddly nowadays, some pro-life people go for that sort of thing. Of all alliances the one of pro-lifers and pro- death penalty has to be one of the weirdest in the history of the world. The alliance was created by the GOP.
No, actually politicians don’t sound tough when they support the death penalty. They just sound stupid
4
In Herrera v Collins the Supreme Court essentially held that executing an actually innocent person did not violate the United States Constitution and thus denied a Writ Of Habeas Corpus in a death penalty case where compelling evidence of innocence had been adduced subsequent to conviction! Three dissenting Justices held that it “shocked the conscience” to hold that such comported with the Constitution! In his concurring Scalia ridiculed the three! It was not the decision’s constitutional interpretation the dissenters should doubt be argued but “the calibration of their consciences!”
The amorality of the bloodlust at the heart of America’s system of Jurisprudence shades facilely into immorality when the blood lusted for is Black blood!
3
The death penalty is nothing more than state-sanctioned revenge, meted out disproportionately (and too often erroneously) to those who are racially and economically marginalized. But the same could be said of many of the harsh penalties our flawed system of justice imposes. Our prisons are essentially refugee camps, largely occupied by those who have less standing, less influence, and less opportunity in our society. Reform is desperately needed but, expectably, stalled by a lack of political will and moral fiber.
More than 150 years ago, Dostoyevsky wrote: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." How might he judge us now? How civilized can we be, as long as the death penalty persists and justice is so unfairly applied? Shouldn't we be better than this?
611
In America, you don't get the justice you deserve.
You get the justice you can afford.
870
@Joe That in a nutshell is a central problem with our entire justice system, but its consequences are irreversible with the death penalty. Look at the people on death row, and they are disproportionately people of color--and nearly all poor. Executives of American drug companies caused many thousands of deaths with their reckless marketing of opioids, but they ended up not on death row but in luxurious retirement on Caribbean islands.
169
@Nicholas Kristof
Yes those folks may poor, minorities, etc., however that doesn't mean that they aren't guilty of the crime they were accused of, tired for and found guilty of.
7
@James, but if we believe in justice then it's a problem if poor minorities are systematically treated more harshly.
35
Typical Left Wing nonsense. Kristof. you care more about the lives of convicted murderers than you do the victims.
9
Lets hope that the death penalty state barbarism no better than the barbarism of murderers in the U.S. on average is abolished soon. The death penalty is irreversible and it is often the case that criminals in prison are exonerated of the crimes they commit after many years typically with DNA. On these grounds alone, the inevitable execution of innocents, let alone the cruel and unusual punishment inflicted that the death penalty should be abolished.
3
Yet another tiresome debate about the death penalty. I agree, it has little deterrent effect. The purpose is justice for the most heinous of crimes. I also agree that in this case “justice” and “revenge” intersect. I’m not put off by that. Justice in heinous offenses is about more than “getting him off the streets”. It is society’s judgment that offenders whose behavior which is so outside the bounds of ordinary sensibilities should be deprived of life – the ultimate punishment. It is not barbaric, it is not “State murder”. Societies have always retained the right to execute those of its members whose criminality was so far outside the pale as to shock the conscience. At least we have progressed from executing boys for stealing a loaf of bread in Victorian England. Current law requires the application of strict standards before execution can be applied. Having said all of that, it is horrific that innocent people have been executed because of prosecutorial misconduct, racists juries and judges, lying witnesses and faulty police work. That to me is the immoral element in this - not some bleeding heart excuses for someone who had a bad childhood or that statistically one race suffers more criminal convictions than another - and because of that I would agree that the death penalty be suspended, not abolished, until the process can be cleansed of its abuses and weaknesses.
3
I agree with the death penalty, especially in cases where it is so blatently obvious the person committed the crime. Killers and terrorists have victims too, and victims don't get a second chance at life.
In the case of terrorism, the terrorists should be executed because if you don't execute them you are handing a death sentence to a whole innocent nation where the crimes were committed, because muslim terrorist group will plan a revenge killing if the killer isn't executed and so more innocent victims get killed.
Terrorists revenge killings should target the killer and break into the prison where they are and kill the killer. They need to be more specific about whom they target and go after the killer as all citizens of the nation where the terrorist killer committed their terrorism, are victims too.
3
Here's a suggestion...
How about having the cases where the death penalty imposed reviewed by vetted prosecutors/defense lawyers from another jurisdiction...
This would help by reducing the possibilities of prosecutorial misconduct, the most prevalent reason why defendants are erroneously convicted.
1
Despite all of the legal protections and defense support, prosecution of death penalty cases will continue to remain biased, politically influenced, more costly, racist and unevenly applied. Eliminating the death penalty in favor of life imprisonment as most other countries have done is the only logical choice. I find it curious that the death penalty has been applied (since 1976 reinstatement) predominantly in southern states. Believe that's another article (or book) Mr. Kristof. Thank you for writing this and please don't stop here.
2
If killing Is wrong, it's wrong. Period.
Knowing what we know now about false convictions, it's even more imperative that the US overturn the death penalty.
If the state executes an innocent person, then they have committed murder. There is no other way of seeing it.
Should those involved in the wrongful conviction and execution of an innocent person also be convicted and executed for murder?
3
Why do prosecutors fight so hard to prevent the presentation of exculpatory evidence? At the same tme that they are combing ancestry databanks looking for DNA that is not voluntarily given for use by police and prosecutors, they adamantly refuse to look at DNA that would prove their own gross misconduct of justice? Oh, i think i just answered my own question.
1
There is a basic assumption that the death penalty is worse than life in prison. I think the death penalty lets the convict off the hook. Life in prison is a punishment. The death penalty just moves up the date where you no longer exist. Personally, given a choice between spending the rest of my life in an American prison or death, I would choose to end it now.
1
I cannot imagine how somebody could murder someone unless it was in self-defense. We all know, especially now, that the justice system is overwhelmingly rigged. It is now a battle between lawyers for fame and fortune. If a case lands in court it's over for you and you've just lost a whole lot of money.
Since I do not believe in an afterlife, I have always felt that an evil person should spend a long life in prison, one capable of redemption may find peace, and an innocent one may receive exoneration.
2
I do not see where we mortals have the right to take another person's life. Some murderers obviously think so - but I'm talking about the government. For the government to take on the responsibility of ending another person's life.....where do they get the idea that it's their job? This immense decision does not properly belong to the politicians, it belongs to our Higher Powers, or God, or Allah, or Fate, whatever name you use. It does not belong to us mere mortals, and it certainly does not belong to politicians.
2
How many death penalty decisions are made on people who from broken homes, abusive pasts, etc. whose acts are spur of the moment crimes of passion.
And yet, when a group of executives at a car manufacturer decide that it will be cheaper for them to pay for wrongful death suits for people killed by a defect than it would be to pay for an across the board recall that would prevent those deaths, they will personally never face even a fine.
2
I'm sorry I have to disagree. Obviously the courts have to do better in determining who is actually guilty. Executint the innocent is a travesty.
Where guilt is beyond doubt, execution is what needs to be done. Our courts and prisons are about punishment for deeds done. They talk about rehabilitation but no matter the crime that comes after punishment.
You've killed someone, the only atonement is to give up something of equal value, your life.
If that makes me a killer by proxy, I can live with that.
2
I think opposition to the death penalty should be more of a litmus test for Democrats than opposition to the Hyde amendment.
The culture of death begins with the death penalty and mindless perpetual war.
1
The ugly math of the death penalty reduces to two fundamentals:
1) A majority of the voters in the most PC, lefty, progressive state, California, not only consistently approve of the death penalty, they enthusiastically support it. Recently faced with two referendum questions on the ballot, to abolish the death penalty or speed up executions, the voters defeated the former and approved the latter. Governors come and go who can temporarily put stopgap holds on its imposition, but executing people remains popular among those sunny, inclusive, idealistic Californians. Until self-proclaimed liberals confront this troubling paradox (arguably, hypocrisy) in their dogma, we will continue to methodically hunt, incarcerate, and kill people.
2) The price of the death penalty as social policy is that innocent people have been and will continue to be executed. It may be only 1% of cases, or even less. But human fallibility is part of the investigation, crime lab testing, and jury process. Mistakes are inevitable. If you accept that killing the innocent 1% is an OK price for killing the guilty 99, so be it. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that’s not a real and troubling cost.
3
See the incredible film “Clemency” when it is released.
The European Union forbids the death penalty.
The nations in the EU also have some the most sensible gun ownership statutes in the world. (Hold on! A person with dubious mental health can't stockpile weapons and ammo!! Yep that's true)
These nations also put a very strong emphasis on the well being of their citizens with social programs, health care and other things a human being needs to live a productive life. Starting at birth.
Ya know, when life ACTUALLY begins.
No one could argue that living conditions in the EU are not some of the best on Earth.
So, hmmm, no guns, lots of social consciousness and human oriented spending - oh and high taxes on the wealthy - plus no death penalty…
And the result is…
Societies with good, healthy, productive people. From birth.
Ya know, when life ACTUALLY begins.
Wow.
How is that possible!!
3
Death penalty maybe, for the state, costs less than life imprisonment and both anyhow stop the murderer to commit murder again so definitely prevents murders
1
Let they who have not sinned throw the first stone. If you do not desire to be judged, then do not judge.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Love not only your family, friends and neighbors but love your enemies, even as you love your God.
The moral high ground can be articulated from the Bible.
1
Sometimes you can take a complicated issue like this and distill it down to the 'personal' level. If you seriously believe in the death penalty, then here; take this hammer or machete and you take care of business.
On a more esoteric level; when you put another human to death, you are acting on the level of the proven perpetrator. I get it, that there are some messed up/evil humans on this planet...that we need to isolate from society. They belong behind bars. I am NOT killing another human. Period
2
The death penalty is justified for the worst murderers. Maybe it is just for societal vengence but serial killers should not get to live a normal lifespan chatting it up with their fellow inmates. There are just some people who are incontrovertibly evil sociopaths. While they may have grown up in toxic environments that does not excuse horrific acts. The one caveat I would add to any death penalty conviction is a post sentencing review of guilt or failure to prove guilt by an impartial non political panel of judges five years after the initial conviction.
1
We need to come to terms with the reality that, when all the rationalizations and obfuscation are swept out of the way, only one true justification for the death penalty remains: pure, spiteful revenge. Vengeance is a poor driver of public policy.
I am not being sanctimonious here. If someone near and dear to me were brutalized to the point of death, I'd want revenge, too. Fortunately, cooler authoritative heads in the community would restrain me.
My desire for vengeance hardly justifies the official degradation of societal decency by making a grievous wrong doubly grievous in the name of all my fellow citizens made complicit in deathly guilt.
1
Nicholas: Your sentiments are noble but why should a vicious murderer live while the persons he murdered are in the ground and the lives of their loved ones are shattered just thinking that their loved one is in the ground and his or her murderer is above it.
2
"Revenge is mine," sayeth the Lord. Let's leave the punishment of death up to God unless there are eye witnesses or strong evidence. There is an instinctive desire for revenge when one of ours is killed by a monster like David Bundy. Society can't exist when violent people are allowed to kill, but prison for those people could be a worse punishment than death. And while we're on the subject, our various forms of execution are primitive and need to be changed. It may make the relatives feel better, but it makes us all less human.
2
This country is far too cozy with violence, from mass shootings to our movies. It's primitive. Not an attitude the richest, most powerful nation on Earth should hold.
And what of the murderous lifer who murders a prison guard?
What should be done with him?
1
It upsets me that HArris would not agree to a DNA test
You should check out Wendy shoob and her husband work history.
Prosecutorial misconduct should be punished before trial by oversight committees
Keep the death penalty
Get rid off crooked lawyers and judges ncluding some you mentioned here
No one has the right to kill any other human being, period.
3
Apparently conservatives want a government so small that it fits inside women’s uteruses but also so big that it grants itself the right to kill its own people. To any death penalty supporters in the comments: should we rape rapists? Burn down the houses of arsonists? Chop off the hands of thieves? Unfortunately I’ve come to expect hypocrisy as a quintessential ingredient of the conservative ideology.
2
Why is it that murdering gangsters rarely, if ever get, the death penalty. While some out of control insane people aren't so fortunate.
What if the families of the victims want blood. And would Mr Kristof like to live on the same block with convicted killer ex cons?
1
The Death Penalty is so XII century.
1
Real civilized countries gt rid of the death penalty years ago . One reason being the numbers of people that were innocent. My Gosh why not go back to lynching or burning at the stake.
1
The death penalty’s real and only purpose is revenge, served in cold blood and with no intention to deter or serve any other purpose except to satisfy our most archaic mammalian reflexes.
The US should stop lying to itself about this. Stop the hypocrisy.
But that is of course difficult as the US at the same time claims to be a „Christian Nation“ that faithfully executes god‘s will (pun intended).
2
6. Thou shall not kill.
Shouldn't that be enough!
2
Should childhood abuse, neglect and trauma be considered as mitigating factors? Certainly.
But it is hypocritical that the Times and other leftists decry any initiatives to decrease broken homes, single-parent (female) families and teenage pregnancy as “racist”.
If it’s “racist” to sentence black men who came from broken homes, with no positive male influences to death, and it’s also racist to try to discourage such broken upbringings? Then what, pray tell, is the solution?
Make up your mind.
1
Sorry Kamala Harris, your refusal to allow new DNA testing, paid for by the defendant (!) disqualifies you to be President. She should drop out. She's shameless.
4
Three words: "Kenneth Allen McDuff."
Or in the immortal words of Kinky Friedman: "I'm not against the death penalty, I'm against the wrong person getting executed."
2
I'll be honest, I haven't read the article and I wont, why? Because starting an article by saying that "all you know about...insert whatever topic here", is not the most intelligent opener. You don't know what, if anything, I know. Plus, thruthfully, I take offense at the statement. You are entitled to your opinion, I'll keep mine. I expect more of the NYT, Next!
2
The state should not have the right to kill anyone.
2
Thou shall not kill. That is unless another death will compensate for the first death. "Stupid is as stupid does." Forrest Gump
1
This comment is not about this important factual article, it is about the online headline that accompanies it.
"Everything you think you know about the death penalty is wrong."
This headline assumes the writer knows what I think and what I know; and, that what I think and what I know is wrong.
The mindset and journalistic convention used to write this is stupid and arrogant.
Death penalty is all vengeance.
2
OK people let's solve the death penalty, once and for all, here and now.
1. War is war they do not equate. Stop trying to shield your racism using soldiers.
2. Let's stop pretending that we have a judicial and legal system that is fair and just.
3. On what planet do you think black people have the same inherent rights as white people do....here's a clue it is not earth.
4. Why are white men so terrified of black men? You all know the answer to that.
5. Fear is the supreme motivator that prompts people to do evil and unjust actions.
6. So white guys, look and the mirror, open your eyes wide and stare at yourself.
7. Ask yourself: "Of what, or whom, do I fear."
8. Evil though they were at least slave owners were honest with themselves.
Hey NYT do you have he nerve to print this?
2
We have turned majority rule into a god. Truth is a secondary consideration. How sad.
Larry Pray
[email protected]
Eyewitness accounts a notoriously unreliable.
I spent 30 minutes eye to eye listening to a man who told me every despicable depraved thing he was planning to do to me.
I tried to memorize every angle of his face while I tried to talk my way out of being raped.
Afterwards, I realized there is not a thing I remembered about him that would make me feel comfortable enough to point at a line up and say, “That’s the man”. I am absolutely positive.
Anyone who says they can I meet with grave skepticism.
3
To kill to show that killing is wrong is wrong Period. End Of Sentence
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Surprised that you didn’t mention Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative.
1
Another in the NYT’s ongoing series of articles attempting to develop sympathy for criminals.
Execution is 100% effective in reducing recidivism.
1
We are not infallible. We have no right to impose the death penalty on anyone.
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The death penalty is a disgusting perversity of human dignity. It makes executioners out of poor blokes just trying to earn a wage and forever stains those who feel the need to go watch “justice done.” Who wants those people as neighbors?
It’s deeply unsettling to watch prosecutors double-down on prosecuting defendants who are obviously innocent, then proudly claiming victory for verdicts that are as obviously wrong. While the first horror accrues to the falsely convicted, the second terrible reality is that the rest of us live with a brutal killer in our midst. Who wants hubristic fools or silent assassins at a holiday party?
Let’s talk, too, about who gets to be a judge...what makes these individuals special enough to sit in judgement of others? Have they shown us they possess a gravitas most of us lack? Have they distinguished themselves with lives of community service? Are they wise beyond their years? We need to oblige judges to term-limited practice with no possibility of returning to the bench in robes. The frank reality is that there are just too few individuals in any generation possessed of the intelligence and character to serve in this role, let alone serve for decades. (This applies to SCOTUS, too,where the grubby fingernails of politics have gotten too firm a hold.) It’s bad enough we have to suffer the depredations of these pontificating buffoons, we shouldn’t be stuck with the idiots forever.
4
I'm too 'beat-down' by his daily assaults on a foolish nation's consciousness to bother to re-read trump's screed about "the Central Park 5" (and I don't have the photographic memory I'd need to remember much of its 'substance') -- yet I know this much and for sure: Unless the 'copy' was ghost-written in accordance with the fool's own demands -- it 'offered' some words, and many 'wordulars' of his own 'making' ... all in grammar-defying and ingloriously-essential illiteracy.
1
Strong Thurmond does not deserve a pass because ‘standards were different‘. He apparently convicted innocent men and then had them killed. While standard of the time may have justified the punishment for a guilty man, standards of proof do not change. He is proud of arbitrarily killing men entrusted to his judgement. The fact that they were black likely added to his political appeal in that time and place. Another ‘standard of the times’’.
2
What about the victims? as they have a life sentence and you can't bring them back from the dead. When it wasn't a provoked killing then, in some instances, a person needs to be executed.
The Australian terrorist in Christchurch NZ, who killed 50 innocent kiwi citizens, should get the death penalty but won't get it because we don't have the death penalty. This evil person has no regret about committing his hate crime and has pleaded not guilty even though it is all on video. In instances, like that, someone needs to break into the prison he is in, and kill him. This mass murderer is making a mockery of the NZ legal system and has a whole prison wing in a maximum security prison all to himself. (It's not maximum security as prisoners in it have broken out of the prison, near Auckland city, in the past.
Each particular case should be taken on its facts and in some cases the killer is so clearly the killer and deserves to die so social justice is done. A psychopath who kills and has no regret about killing is a danger to society and should be executed. Don't forget these psychos have victims and deserve to die.
Terrorist groups should go after the individual who committed the crime and not take it out on the nation whose citizens are victims as well, when they do revenge attacks.
2
The death penalty doesn't work. Never has.
2
I wonder about all the anti abortion people who say life is sacred.....there shall be no exceptions. I wonder if they also support the death penalty? And what do you do when a man demands that people be executed who are then found innocent and that man stands by his zeal for the death penalty for those innocent men? Why you vote for him for president, of course. No exceptions.
3
As a philosophical question as to kill or be killed then I support the state using the death penalty with proper prudence and oversight.
These vile deranged cruel murderers have no right to exist in the tangible world...they forfeited that chance a million times to get to that place and time where their life and the life of others was so worthless. Yes, they felt the back of a hard hand along the way and so did you and I. Yes, they were someone’s loved son or daughter and so were you and I.
I will respectfully push your life away on your behalf under a reasonable and logical justice system.
Value life and life values you.
2
Jury trials are the opportunity to get it WRONG. That is why they exist, so that folk mores can release the guilty, and as a protection against a "political" conviction.
Those accused of capital crimes should get double protection -- first the opportunity for a jury to exonerate them, and then a review of the evidence by a panel of forensic scientists, who can relieve the person of the death penalty by their findings (leaving them in jail), and whose review of the evidence could be used by a governor to pardon the person.
As a lawyer, and as the lawyers who post here state it, jury outcomes are spectacularly random. But, the institution of the jury has been in place, over the centuries, so that juries can create outcomes that political elites might not want -- O.J.'s acquittal would be an example.
So...leave the jury in place as an institution of potential exoneration in the criminal field, but review capital crimes for the scientific quality of the evidence thereafter before executing anyone.
As for killing a killer making us a killer: There is a difference between a considered killing in defense of social order, and the act of the murderer. Killing Hitler's solders was a moral killing, and it was not the moral equivalent of the Nazis killings. I have no problem at all with killing bad people, but I want to be totally certain of their guilt (hence the scientific review panel). Otherwise, leave them in jail in case the evidence turns in favor of their innocence.
1
Only barbaric societies kill people. Criminals must pay for what they did with the death penalty out of the table. Advance societies should have systems to deal with crime and justice and, killing is not moral. It does not matter how you call it.
Mr. Kristof - Talked to a victims family yet ?
2
What the "System" is sorely missing is a Presidetial Clemency.
Thank you, Nicholas, for your consistent compassion in your editorial opinions. Your efforts are certainly right livelihood by helping make the world we share more conscious and kind. As the Mayan builders of the Miso-American pyramids spoke, "In Lak'ech," or "I am another yourself."
2
The death penalty is an abomination. I oppose it for the same reasons I favor more restrictions on abortion, because life is sacred. Life imprisonment is sufficient to protect the public in a developed western society. A life sentence also allows for time to prove innocence if the verdict is wrong or for the murderer to repent if it was not.
1
The USA allows:
The weekly slaughter of US school children,
Kills thousands all over the world in collateral damage
Tolerates more US citizens killed by gunshots in 5 month of one year that were killed in the Normandy Invasion
Allows tens of thousands of its own citizens to die from lack of health care
And you want us to get upset because a few, 99.9% guilty murderers are killed?
Perspective?
Priorities?
1
Two wrongs don't make a right.
1
We live in an immoral country. I am no longer proud to be called an American and wish I could emigrate. But I truly believe humanity is lost, that we are in our death throes, that we collectively know our existence is not sustainable. I can’t wait for my peaceful and permanent sleep.
1
And, that is really difficult to accept for many, but it is true, most criminals are psychiatric patients. Where do people stand when they kill patients? Keep them away from society, that they cannot commit crimes again, of preferable, do but commit crimes at all. A morally good country would do this in a good way, but I am afraid about this .....
By advertizing that some acts should be punished by death of the perpetrator, society promotes the idea that killing is sometimes best, the crucial belief murderers need to murder in the first place.
I never thought I would support the death penalty, but when I watch the news night after night almost every case of sexual abuse against minors is about a person who already served time for sexual abuse. We euthanize dogs who are a danger to people and other dogs. I think there are some people who are dangerous to humans, and when these people rape or molest children or make children perform sex acts on them, they should be put down if the state won’t castrate them or keep them imprisoned forever.
1
Here's one example of why the death penalty with its finality is necessary. There are many others.
Erwin Machine Gun Walker from California, 1940s
Walker came from a middle class family in Glendale CA. He even worked a short time as a dispatcher for the Glendale Police Dept. He started stealing audio equipment for the movie industry and reselling it. He stole cars and firearms. He rigged up a tommy gun to the door of a stolen car to shoot when he opened the door and pulled a string. One night (1946) Officer Roosevelt from the highway patrol saw him speeding and pulled him over. Walker opened fire shooting Roosevelt nine times. Roosevelt survived long enough to give a detailed description.
Over the next few months the LAPD finally tracked Walker down but not before he shot and wounded an LAPD lieutenant.
Walker was convicted and sentenced to death. Walker was smart, ( he attended CalTech for awhile) and knew that in California they couldn't execute you if you were crazy.
Walker convinced the warden and the courts he was nuts and the courts changed his sentence to life in prison without parole.
He fought his case saying it was unconstitutional to never have a chance at parole. His sentence was changed to life with the possibility of parole. A few years later he convinced the parole board he wasn't crazy and they paroled him in 1974. Walker left prison a free man after 28 years.
1
Thou shall not kill. This applies to judges and juries as well.
2
Our society is simply not mature enough to wield the death sentence.
1
And then there is someone like Ted Bundy. What do you do with someone like him? For someone like me who is against the death penalty, I don't have an answer. There is a part of me that says he got what he deserved and there is a far less part of me that says he should have gotten life. It is not an easy issue.
Americans are philosophically ignorant. Their culture is governed by mystiques that are not even religious or date from obsolete religious beliefs.
The last of the industrialized world not to have abolished the death penalty which some theoreticians have established as a core of capitalism. ( Michel Foucault ).
Those who saw the chart of paid vacation days in Europe ( 35 to 40 / year ) and in the USA ( zero ) have seen the picture of death penalty ideology difference.
And 8 times more violent crime and incarceration rate than in Europe ,per capita . (Europe is denser ).
Even here in the NYT , you still have people who write extreme religious comments to defend the death penalty.
The death penalty creates crime.
2
The death penalty is about revenge. Even about Hammurabi’s Code. I’m ok with that.
1
One simple question, why if government says it’s wrong for its citizens to kill, is it acceptable for the government (run by citizens) to kill?
1
I'm really not sure this has anything to do with the the 'Death Penalty' in and of itself. This is more the parlor tricks that the prosecutor and the defense play, along with the blessings of the judge, during the whole theatrical presentation of the court proceedings. The 'Death Penalty' is an outcome of the dangerous games that these 'incompetent' people like to play with other just as incompetent people whom don't know any better. If you really want to pull the wool over the juries eyes and you can live with that decision, then maybe it's the people the justice system employs and not the outcome of the proceedings...The fact that I as a tax payer still feed members of the Manson family is a crying shame! case in point...
Going beyond Mr. Christoph's comments in the above-linked OP-ED, I maintain that it matters not whether a person is guilty of crimes that by law indicate a death sentence. The death penalty is just not logical. Officially killing people -- engaging in the very act that the person committed to earn the death sentence -- is equivalent to having sex for the purpose of preserving virginity. The government should set an example that hopefully more will follow. Stop the official killing of people. It is time for actual civilization to set in -- it is never a civil act to kill a person and as long as our governments officially kill people, we are all savages. We have been ensconced in various faux civilizations for the 5 to seven thousand years. How long does humanity have to hold its breath before we have actual civilization?
Thank you for a comprehensive, unusually well done piece on this most important subject. One may argue that a person who kills deserves to be killed, but based on research and real life experiences, it is impossible to believe our system is capable of ensuring just verdicts with even a 95% confidence level. If you value innocence and human life, this means there is nothing to argue: this fact alone renders the death penalty unjust and criminal.
2
Beyond a reasonable doubt is a shockingly insufficient standard of proof of a capital offense. The penalty is irremediable. It cannot, when imposed, be undone It therefore requires absolute, irrefutable knowledge. That standard is unattainable. For this reason, in addition to the myriad expressed through the years, the death penalty cannot is an abomination.
2
" . . . with liberty and justice for all." As George Will would say: Well. Our refusal to provide competent legal counsel to the accused is a measure of our national and cultural character. Our refusal to provide adequate resources to disadvantaged people continues to feed the monsters of poverty and ignorance and unmitigated suffering among those who, as we all did, started out as innocent children. These monsters provide our designated criminals.But the advantaged criminals who imported slaves, who manipulate the disadvantaged and who abandon the poor, generally are not brought to justice, historically. And in America, most of those hyper-criminals would identify themselves as Christians. We seem to have no national ability to have remorse about this. Donald Trump was duly elected President of the United States. It is fitting. He is truly our ideal. It is unutterably sad.
5
Mr. Kristof, please keep writing these articles---the ones you also write about guns--but, you are up against our a nation whose DNA has strains of racism, retribution, and violence baked in...they are American as apple pie.
3
Drug dealers already face a death penalty far more likely to be applied than by any state or the Federal government.
Big time drug dealers kill each other at an exceedingly high rate and if you become one, you'd better get ready to die young.
As for killing a police officer, if you do so, you'd better expect that another office is going to kill you.
And isn't it curious that the states without a death penalty have the lowest murder rates while those with it have the highest rates. It seems its deterrence fact is nonexistent.
Another idea from Trump that ignores reality.
It's always interesting to me that the Bible quoters forget this one absolute:
"Thou Shalt Not Kill," from the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 (v. 13.)
It doesn't say, "Thou shalt not kill except when you decide someone is guilty of a crime."
It doesn't say, "Thou shalt not kill unless a white man who never went to war decides to invade a foreign country and put young American lives at risk, with certainty of death for some of them."
It doesn't say, "Thou shalt not kill except when you cherry-pick the Bible for other rationalizations."
In New Hampshire, we just eliminated the death penalty, no thanks to former Democratic Governor Jeanne Shaheen (now a pol in the Senate,) who vetoed a former bill, and Governor Sununu, who vetoed the bill that was then overridden in the legislature. New Hampshire finally takes "Thou shalt not kill" seriously. True Christianity and other moral religions, finally come to New Hampshire.
3
It does not make any sense whatsoever to teach a society not to kill by killing.
2
Author: your arguments are ill-prepared and often illogical. For example you defend men given the death penalty by citing their unfortunate upbringing, a point that is not “the point.” I wanted to read a reason to change my view, but your piece did not, so it only fortified my current beliefs.
1
When Jane Goodall was mortified by the heinous actions of warlike chimpanzees, she wondered, in our evolution did that revengeful gene find its way into our species.
It seems as though it has.
2
"Racial bias affects every aspect of the criminal justice system, and researchers have found that black defendants not only do worse than white defendants, but also that blacks with dark complexions fare worse than those with light ones." No surprise here in the Deep South. The fallback position seems to be that if a black man just happens to be innocent of the crime for which he is accused, he must be guilty of something, so let's find him guilty of this one. He is guilty because he is black. As a result of Nixon's Southern Strategy having conquered the Republican Party (case in point: the election of Donald Trump), this approach to justice as swept over the nation.
It’s curious that hand wringing liberals are steadfast in their belief that the government cannot get it right on death penalty cases, but then advocate that the same government is the answer for all else of society’s needs. I’m of the first opinion.
2
You were absolutely wrong. "Everything you thought I knew about the death penalty" was right. Some of us in this cursed nation are informed. I myself have always abhorred the death penalty, as should everyone. If one person is wrongly put to death, it is too many. Many more than one has been put to death unjustly time and again. This is mainly due to a rewards culture that rates prosecutors by bean counting. Secondly, even when a person is guilty, we bring ourselves to their level when we execute them.
1
The United States has become a land of killing. Every day 109 Americans are killed by bullets. The American military has killed sixteen million people since the end of the Second World War. Capital punishment is just another aspect of the American epidemic of killing. As the Bible says, a country that lives by the sword will perish by the sword.
3
The death penalty is not about justice. It’s about satiating a primal lust for revenge.
1
“Oct. 27, 1976”
You start with an example from over 40 years ago. The Salem Witch Trials were also unjust for what it’s worth.
Yes, historically we have incorrectly sentenced people to death on questionable evidence, especially those of color. However, in 2019, with significantly improved forensic techniques and a massive repository of DNA data, combined with the ubiquity of security camera footage and iPhone location data, it is increasingly easy to correctly convict murderers.
I have no doubt minorities will continue to be unfairly convicted at higher rates, so establishing protections for them I am all for, but to let evil humans continue to walk on the Earth after the atrocities they have committed is also unjust.
We should be streamlining the process to put people to death in instances where there is absolutely no question they committed certain crimes, notably 1st degree murder. All others should be capped at a life-sentence.
1
How does it make sense to maintain a punishment that involves the ultimate consequence...death...and which CANNOT BE CORRECTED if it is discovered that a mistake was made?
It always amazes me how lightly advocates of the death penalty seem to dismiss the whole issue of mistaken convictions and executions. To me, that has been the decisive argument against capital punishment. Mr. Kristof cites a figure of 2,700 inmates on death rows in the US, and an estimate that 4% of them are innocent. But if only 1/3 of 1% of them are actually innocent, we are talking about 9 people being unjustly executed. How much would you want to bet that the error rate is in fact that low? And for those who dismiss this issue...just how many such mistakes are acceptable to you?
Apart from all the troubling questions about how capital punishment is applied, and who it is applied to, I believe that the unacceptably high risk of mistaken executions ought to put the death penalty off the table altogether.
2
The arguments against the death penalty are so tiresome.
Much of the case against capital punishment involves copious amounts of virtue signaling.
In this day and age, technology in many cases has made the ID of murderers virtually foolproof. And, for those cases in which ID cannot be established without certainty, life without parole is the correct sentence.
In any event, the state punishing a Ted Bundy or a Tim McVeigh with death is the height of morality, not some slippery slope towards a lost civilization.
1
We can reasonably argue about whether killing killers makes any moral sense, but the bit about DNA is just silly.
OJ got off in part because the cops fouled up collecting the blood evidence.
Ted Cruz went to the Supremes and argued that sure, DNA exonerated this guy, but he asked for the test too late.
There are sixteen ways DNA evidence can be wrong.
"A majority of Americans (56 percent, according to Gallup) favor capital punishment, believing that it will deter offenders or save money and presuming that it will apply only to the vilest criminals and that mistakes are not a serious risk.
All these assumptions are wrong."
This is almost entirely wrong, and one has to wonder if Kristof is really that ignorant of if he is intentionally obfuscating.
Firstly, where he is right: Mistakes are a serious risk -- not because they are frequent, but because even one innocent mistakenly executed is a terrible injustice. We are human, so we can never be entirely free from error. However, the incredibly small risk of an innocent being executed these days could be even further reduced by requiring there be no question (not just proof beyond a reasonable doubt) whether the accused committed the crime. That is the case in many, if not most, capital punishment cases.
Of course the death penalty deters, especially if it were more timely. Very likely it deters potential criminals, but for sure it ensures that the recidivist rate is ZERO.
The death penalty WOULD save money, if it were promptly determined and executed. The reason it is not promptly determined and executed, even in cases where the guilt is obvious, is because of efforts by those, such as Mr. Kristof, trying to delay trials and executions.
And capital punishment is these days reserved for the most heinous of crimes, as the Supreme Court has required.
1
And when we execute somebody who didn’t do it, we’re TWICE as sure they won’t do it again, amirite?
1
Thank you for this Nicholas. As always, your reporting luminates the best and worse in all of us and cleary not just "elected officials." I am 73 years on now and when I reflect on not so long ago, I am horrified that I have witnessed so many despicable acts by politicians and "those in charge," that it deeply saddens me for not being aware and protesting. Thank you for making us aware of so much wrongness in our world today. Please never give up. Thank you.
Mr. Kristof makes some powerful arguments, but there are two that I find particularly unpersuasive. The first is that criminal's troublesome childhood or other background should be taken into account as possible mitigation in determining the appropriate sentence. If someone is a sadistic, violent killer, I don't particularly care how he or she got to be that way.
Mr. Kristof describes the second as follows: "there remains the basic question of what the execution of someone like Reams would accomplish — and whether, more than a quarter-century later, that 18-year-old offender still exists to execute." To me that has a bootstrap quality. We provide extensive procedural rights to capital defendants, so there is often a significant delay in executing them. But the delay that results from a defendant's exercise of those rights shouldn't be an independent basis for voiding a death penalty sentence. It would be like showing mercy to Lyle and Erik Menendez, who murdered their parents, because they were orphans.
4
While it is statistically true, as Kristof points out, that states which lack the death penalty have lower murder rates than those which have capital punishment, the reason seems obscure to the lay public, but not to those who have learned the underlying principle of antisocial personality.
Sociopaths, believe themselves to be, for whatever reason, superior to ordinary, law abiding citizens. They call themselves 'players'; they prove their superiority by arousing the emotions of the 'straight' people. It's not enough to just commit crimes; it's important that they be recognized as criminals and treated harshly. To them, it is more valiant to commit a murder where the penalty may be death because it shows how willing they are to fly in the face of the straights.
So, when we execute a sociopath, we have given him what he craves: recognition as a superior being, an ubermensch.
We will never live in a world without sociopaths, or other people who kill for other reasons, but we lower ourselves when we sentence anyone to death.
Here's my solution (unworkable as it may seem): pass a law that states that when a capital murder case is overturned, the prosecutor and all officers of the court, including police officers, associated with the wrongful conviction, be sentenced to 20 years in solitary confinement in prison. No trial, no appeal. If you've been part of a conspiracy to kill a citizen who did not commit the crime, you go to prison, automatically.
Very well written article. I completely agree that the death penalty should be abolished in civil society because it is ineffective, expensive, and unfairly/unevenly imposed upon segments of society. I do, however, believe it should remain in effect only in military courts. There are offenses in war I would leave to the military to determine how to dispense justice.
Now we should look to society and its propensity to incarcerate people at a much higher rate than other countries. The statistics of the percentage of the population in prison are staggering when compared to other developed countries. What are we doing wrong? There is a long look in the mirror due in this country to see how we can better take care of ourselves and our neighbors. Let’s look to the ideas of the Sermon on the Mount and live more compassionately.
2
What a great article. All I can say is I am so glad I live in Canada.We don’t always get it right but at least nobody dies.
7
Except for the 660 homicide victims in 2017. But yes, you are right that their killers still get to live.
3
@Carole Finlayson
Karen Homulka.
Was justice served?
2
I believe the most consistent position is that all human life is sacred and to be protected, whether it's a guilty life in prison or an innocent life in the womb. I believe the only justifiable taking of human life is in self-defense against someone threatening human life. I realize there are good and honorable people on all sides of such questions. But I believe we'd be a much more peaceable nation if we respected human life in all its forms and in all situations.
1
I agree with Mr. Kristof's arguments as to why the death penalty is not a workable solution to addressing the most heinous crimes.
However, what keeps nagging me in the back of my mind is: what would my position be if a loved one of mine was murdered and the person convicted was clearly guilty? Would I be so rational as to consider the arguments made here? Or would I want revenge? I can't answer those questions.
1
The state is given the right to take a life, as we have ceded that as an individual right when we signed on to the social contract. When a person is accosted and the outcome is likely death, who seriously doubts that the one accosted would use whatever means to preserve his or her life, including killing the assailant! Who would call that act of self defense murder. Now, if the assailant is successful in the commission of murder, his disposition is up to the state. In the absence of a death penalty, the only reason that the assailant lives is because he was successful in the murder and is now protected by the state. While pains should be taken to impose the death penalty with great care (more than has been the case in the past), in the interest of those murdered and their family members, many of whom would seek retribution except for the state, the state should not hesitate to execute the murderer. I say this as one whose wife was murdered.
2
I think the discussion misses the point. The death penalty is not the problem. The problem is wrongful conviction. That is a failure of the court system and investigators. They have no responsibility for mistakes.
Execution is a perfectly valid sentence. When applied correctly to the guilty, it terminates a deadly threat and saves taxpayers a lot of money.
Taking decades before execution is inexcusable. The cost of a bullet is small. The only problem is getting it wrong. Getting it right is a matter of responsibility. The goal should not be finding a person guilty, but finding the truth.
4
Thanks for making it clear that the moral argument in favor is a buncha hooey, and the real point is vengeance, efficiency and cost.
1
Well written and heartbreaking that we created and prolong this system of injustice when we have the tools to make it stop.
A reader below reminds us that it is human nature to seek revenge. The need to overcome the worst aspects of our own human nature is still a political quandry way off into the future, but as a people we need to start at home: Abolish the dealth penalty for good.
We are smarter than this. We have the tools to intervene in a child's development before a crime is committed, yet we continue to look the other way because the there is money to be made from the incarceration system.
Large scale, I hope a future smarter generation of Americans will one day apologize to the Iraqi people for our gravest revenge mistake: The Iraq War.
Thousands of inocents die when the American government uses mass death penalty tools of war to strike out beyond our borders. The source of the 9/11 crime was squarely a third country that to this day acts with impunity. America sells them weapons without thinking through the consequences because there is money to be made from international arms sales that reign dealth down on innocents.
Right now on both scales, this is who we are. We need to abolish the dealth penalty at home and abroad and we have the tools to do this.
7
The U.S. is the only First World nation to regularly use the death penalty. It also has the developed world's highest murder rate, by far.
Moral queasiness aside, capital punishment does not work on any level. Revenge is a fleeting and soul-destroying emotion.
6
Perhaps from the perspective of person with criminal impulses (and poor mental health), the death penalty is seen as a quick way out. In essence, it is identical to suicide - a solution sought both by an individual who can no longer deal with their depression, anxieties, etc; or a person who has just committed some horrible criminal act, such as mass-murder. It is NOT the deterrent that many believe it to be, but rather a preferable one than having to spend the rest of one's life behind the brutal bars of our jails. While a person who spends a significant amount of time facing the actual execution of the death penalty may realize what they've done and desire to repent, at the moment the crime is committed they have no fear of their own life's end. They may even welcome it...
1
Thank you Nicholas Kristof, as always, for your deep thinking perspective, exhaustive research and op-eds. I so admire your willingness and dogged determination. I am a BIG Fan.
6
Execution or not, this is a very complex question. When I was younger and more naive, I may have said, sure, eye for an eye.
But now that I am older and wiser I realize that most questions and decisions are more far-reaching, have more points of views, are more complicated.
I do feel though that we should not just look if there is any good left in a murderer - I think we should look at how much good is in us - to believe in every human being, no matter how hard it is.
What crushes me though is the fact that our justice system is so broken, so unfair.
Very depressing!
4
I understand the many layers that make up everything surrounding the death penalty. Having said that, I also realize that we have NO way to tell whether or not the person who commits the crime has or had the ability to stop themselves from committing it. Until we know enough about the functioning of the human mind/brain to determine that a person COULD have stopped themselves but didn't, we have no reason other than revenge to impose death on the accused.
I often ask myself what the mindset or makeup is of the person who pulls the switch, injects the drugs or pulls the trigger to kill another person when administering the death penalty? How do their brains function and could they keep themselves from doing it?
4
The sole purpose of the death penalty, now and historically, has always been retribution. It has never deterred crime. If it worked that way we would be a society free of violent criminal acts.
While our country is a pretty safe place, the United States enjoys a culture of violence -- in entertainment, political rhetoric, policing, etc. The death penalty just adds fuel to the fire.
There is no reason for the State to kill a citizen, no matter how horrendous the person's crime. And what we know today about the capacity of people to reform and re-invent themselves in prison gives the State even less of a reason.
For me, the arguments that we are executing innocent or reformed people, or that the system is random, are only several good reasons for the death penalty to be banned state by state and under federal law. We cannot rely on the judgmental, arrogant members of the US Supreme Court to do anything about our problem. We, the people, are the State. I do not want to be a participant in putting a fellow citizen to death. This is why I would never ever vote for anyone politician who supports the death penalty.
6
We argue that punishment deters crime, we do this despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This is especially true of actions taken impulsively, without forethought. We punish disproportionately based on rhetoric, prejudice and personal religious beliefs. While we do this as a society we ignore context and uncomfortable circumstances that are not of the defendants making. The result of this is a prison population made up of mostly poor, sometimes mentally impaired and emotionally damaged people who in many cases where failed as children by the very society judging them as adults. If the basic injustices that make up our system of accountability and judgement are to be addressed then we need incarceration based on the actual danger the individual presents to society & not as a emotional reaction to the offense. This is especially true of the war on drugs mentality which has neither deterred drug use nor availability. We are far to easily manipulated by ambitious law & order types who personally benefit from our current justice system, these range from elected officials to the school to prison pipeline. This is a systemic challenge & its solutions need to be as well. In the end a healthy dose of humility and compassion would go along way to healing the damages that this often barbaric system of injustice causes to offenders, victims and society in general. It coarsens us and perpetuates that cycle that we all want ended. We can do better than this, please.
4
Those who would impose their moral beliefs on others - opposition to abortion, death penalty, etc., are forgetting that they are only peripheral to the issue. In the case of death penalty, the victims deserve justice. Of the 6+ billion humans there are quite a few that don't deserve to live on account of their heinous acts towards other human beings, Ted Bundy and Charles Campbell being prime examples. We fail the victims twice by opposing death penalty, first by not protecting them and second by preventing full justice.
3
But the victim does not benefit. The main value is purported to be the deterrent effect which has been widely discredited.
5
This is like asking for mercy because you were orphaned when you killed your parents. If my child or parent or a close one is murdered, I am a victim and I deserve justice. If I don’t get justice, I WILL take law in my own hands. Is that what we want?
1
Punishment in the USA has NEVER been swift and sure, therefore it is ineffective as a deterrent.
1
Thank you Mr. Kristof. I supported the death penalty until 1979 when I was 20 years old. Then I chose the question of whether or not capital punishment was appropriate as the subject of a term paper to research and write for a philosophy class at the University of Colorado. My research led me to the same information, albeit older, and the same conclusion you detail in this commentary.
In our country, the death penalty is administered unevenly and unfairly with regard to race and wealth. Even without those flaws, however, capital punishment doesn't deter crime, gives up on rehabilitation, and cannot be reversed. With those truths in mind, the death penalty reflects horribly on our society.
4
Mr. Kristof - thank you for writing this and for your advocacy in this area.
We have absolute certainty that the death penalty has been employed countless times to murder innocent people, often due to inherent racial bias. Where we have the option of life imprisonment there is simply no possible rationale to justify taking a life when we know that life may be innocent.
2
While a common sentiment in favor of the death penalty is that it serves as a deterrent, there is no proof that it is the case. Instead, as Mr. Kristof points out, "the experts polled in that survey agreed that death penalty debates distract legislatures from policies that actually would reduce crime — like lead removal, early childhood programs, career academies, job training, gang violence initiatives like Cure Violence, and programs for at-risk young people like Becoming a Man."
Yet again, our policy setters are playing checkers when they ought to be playing chess.
4
The death penalty brutalizes us as a country by elevating revenge over justice. Ours is a country steeped in violence and our for profit prison system serves to perpetuate that violence rather than control it.
There is a better way than locking people up under inhuman conditions and even killing some. We have plenty of working examples in Europe of how functional justice systems can work. No, they aren’t perfect either, but they are getting better results.
Reforming our justice system would require more than a series of reforms. It requires a sea change in our national approach to justice.
3
Suppose that all the defendants were actually guilty of depraved homicides, would that change your mind on the DP? If yes, then you really are in favor of the DP, if not, then nothing could convince you to support it. Clearly, even if all of the objections to the DP were lifted,e.g., financial, wrongful convictions, lack of deterrent value, etc., Mr. Kristoff would still oppose the DP. Therefore all of these objections are irrelevant though he brings them forward anyway. Why doesn't he just admit that he doesn't agree that the DP is just in some cases?
The reason he doesn't admit it is because it obviously is just in some cases of particularly depraved and cold-blooded kills. Some deserve death. Did the offender have any concern for you when he put the gun to your head and pulled the trigger? If the the DP isn't just, then no punishment is just.
2
@benedict it's never just. It is a morally bankrupt action.
1
The main reason to have the death penalty is to save the costs of housing and feeding miscreants for decades along with their healthcare. Given how long the appeals can be dragged out these economies can't be realized.
1
the main reason to stop the death penalty among others is this; if we execute an innocent person we cannot change that, is this justice? No!
2
when a person is executed for a crime they did not commit, the case s closed and the person who did commit the crime is free to commit the same crime. The proponents of the death penalty argue that 'just has been done for the victim'. The police and prosecutors are happy to have brought "the family closure" (we are told) and to have "solved" the case.
This leads to a very odd concept of justice where the victim's killer is free (sometimes to kill another innocent person) and an another innocent person is murdered bye the state on behalf of "society" - i.e. the rest of us.
It's a system of which we can all be ashamed - even without the racial "bias" (or is it hatred) that has resulted in so many arbitrary state murders of black men over the past century and more.
Thank you, Nicholas, for continuing, amid the overwhelming chaos that is Trump, to be the voice for morality, justice and kindness for NYT readers. This is a piece that I wish all citizens would read. How, in 2019, we are still unable to reason our way out of this barbaric and flawed practice is beyond me. In a society that from its inception has embraced the age-old principal that it is better that 10 guilty go free than 1 innocent "suffer", it is perplexing that we are willing to kill the inevitable innocent convicted of a capital crime. What does that make us?
3
@SC
Just to be clear, I believe capital punishment is murder and should be abolished in all cases. Even if we were able to assure that no innocents would be convicted, it should still be abolished as it serves no purpose. Revenge is not a purpose.
2
The death penalty constitutes premeditated killing and that should be off limits. Killing out of passion or rage for instance is an altogether different thing.
3
History can be quite bizarre. Mao Zedong of China once said something like. "You have to be very careful applying the death penalty. If you execute someone for the wrong reasons, you cannot later reverse your decision." Then he ignored his own advice.
Large swaths of the American are not known to be particularly astute when it comes to fundamental issues like vaccinations and the separation of church and state, so why should we expect civilized understanding that the death penalty is not a very good method of deterrence. to capital crime.
Thank goodness to journalists like Kristof to set the record straight. This is why I read the NYT.
3
What a Quagmire. In reality, society does have the right to protect itself against those who would harm it. The problem is in finding The Truth! Example: Someone comes up to you, pulls out a gun, shoots you point blank.
Everyone who witnessed this admits that this is exactly what happened!
Now comes the hard part! Why?
This is where there is a parting of the ways. There are some who just don’t believe in Capital Punishment, regardless of the crime.
Some don’t care what the circumstances really are. Execute the suspect! The rest of Society lay somewhere in between.
Until there is a more just solution to Capital Punishment, it would probably be better to err on the side Life Imprisonment.
1
As long as Americans relish their "wild west" mentality that the toughest prosecutors and judges are the best at protecting us from "bad guys", our criminal justice system will be infected by the self interest of the politicians. Their staff will tell them that the public want this guy to fry, and he will go out and appease that sense of "justice" (more likely driven by fear and class hatred) by seeking the death penalty, even if it means hiding exonerating evidence, etc.
Can't we get over the childish fears and hatreds that drive so much of our law? The president revs up his "fans" telling them to beat up a protester and to treat him harshly as they throw him out of the "rally" after stealing his clothes. What kind of behavior is that? Witches and others who don't want to be drowned to prove they are innocent should be careful these days. Dark, ugly and evil emotions are in the ascendant. If it weren't for the tech world showing us ever greater marvels, one could easily think we are sinking into the old ignorant and superstitious world.
1
The death penalty is barbaric and immoral. It should be abolished.
1
One of the ten commandments from the christian god stipulates ‘’you shall not kill’’ and here, i read a comment that there is a exception or a contradiction in a book genesis 9.6. In a another article in today’s NYT i read a women’s worries of having sex or not the christian way. Obviously, sadly, religion makes you loose common sense.
1
Let's just simplify this.
Killing people is morally wrong.
Vengeance is not justice.
Killing a person who is innocent is both morally wrong and evil; ignoring the pleas for justice when evidence is clearly weak or contradicted is vile and evil.
If you are of Christian convictions and beliefs, killing people before they have an opportunity to repent denies God the opportunity to do His work to bring their souls back to Him.
Killing people for killing others does not stop people from killing others; people who plan to kill doen't plan to be caught and people who kill impulsively don't think things through at all.
We really don't need a whole lot more to think about. We are a barbaric nation, when we look at our criminal justice system and how we apply the death penalty.
2
After serving as a juror on a murder case I’m appalled at the poor critical thinking of fellow jurors. Their last safe refuge is whether the killer will kill again as though they can imagine the future. Their concern for the victim’s family is almost nonexistent.
Lady Justice is not only blind but her sword is dull and blunted.
2
When we kill, we are also killers. I do not presume to even have a better solution, never mind the perfect solution. I just don't think we solve anything by taking someone's life.
3
Very good piece! My personal view is that the death penalty is, in practice, too expensive to be worthwhile, apart from any moral issues. But I wish people would focus on all the other ways government action/inaction kill people. For example, when the government sets a standard for exposure to a carcinogenic chemical, knowing that the standard will mean that some people will die. Or when the government fails in its oversight of the aircraft industry and planes start falling out of the sky (as in 737 Max).
4
Very good piece! My personal view is that the death penalty is, in practice, too expensive to be worthwhile, apart from any moral issues. But I wish people would focus on all the other ways government action/inaction kill people. For example, when the government sets a standard for exposure to a carcinogenic chemical, knowing that the standard will mean that some people will die. Or when the government fails in its oversight of the aircraft industry and planes start falling out of the sky (as in 737 Max).
Most of Kristof's arguments about problems with the death penalty, aren't criticism of capital punishment, but criticism of the criminal justice system itself. But no one proposes that we abolish criminal justice. The answer is to mend it, not end it.
Anecdotes about errors in criminal justice aren't reason to abolish capital punishment. To totally abolish capital punishment, you need to find arguments as to why someone who's crime was heinous and who's guilt is unquestioned (think Timothy McVeigh or Dylan Roof) should not be executed.
The argument against capital punishment based on its cost is also spurious. It is is those fighting against capital punishment that have made the costs so high. This argument is similar to right wing arguments that underfunded government programs should be abolished because they are ineffective - due to underfunding.
2
Years ago I read an article in the Japan times. It was about a Japanese soldier who had initially been sentenced to death for crimes against humanity in China, the sentence was changed to life in prison, and ultimately he served only five years. He said that had he been executed right after the war, he would have died with a clear conscience as at the time he just thought he had served the emperor. It took twenty years before he started to feel the first pangs of remotes which continued to grow. Now, he spent his years praying for his victims and educating school children about what he and others had done in China. Whenever he talked about one particular cruel experiment he had devised (lining up Chinese men to see how many in a row could be killed by a single shot from a Japanese rifle) his hands started to shake, at the thought that his own hands had done these things. I have never forgotten about this man who (in my eyes at least) succeeded in rehabilitating himself as a decent human being. I also regard his example as an argument against the death penalty.
1
The death penalty, like so many examples in American life (here’s looking at you health care!), is illogical, immoral, and a financial boondoggle. Most of the developed world has already outlawed the punishment, as well. However, we continue to slaughter people in the name of justice — to find that it is our values and ethics are that are brutalized in the process. The just answer is simple: end the death penalty.
1
Excellence in journalism, though I've come to expect nothing less from Nicholas Kristof.
I hope that the promise of America will soon prevail and we will see an end to the death penalty in the US.
If for no other reason than the four percent.
4
Compelling arguments. I’ll have to think about it. For me, these are still the hard cases; when video, multiple witnesses leave no doubt as to the identity of the actor- the mass school shootings as examples. Do you really think ‘cultural values’ will ever evolve to justify these? And if, after 50 years in prison, that shooter has matured into a different person - a benefit his victims will never have- then .....what.....age becomes a defense to everything? Set the definition of juvenile to...age 35?
And of course that is also the most compelling, and saddest argument against the death penalty. They are different persons.
Thanks for the arguments. After the next mass shooting, when the proud killer sits for a photo, I won’t automatically think drawing and quartering should come back. And after the next camera video of police brutality- I won’t automatically believe their testimony, or give over complete faith in prosecutorial honesty. We oldsters can learn, change. Sometimes.
1
The logic here makes no sense. The state kills people for claiming that someone killed someone. So killing is OK if the state does it via actual people who do the legalized killing. I hardly think there is a difference since whoever kills purposely will always claim a reason. Either it is wrong to murder or not. If it is wrong, then no one should be allowed to kill another person.
1
“No longer can a jury wantonly and freakishly impose the death sentence,” Justice Potter Stewart declared in the majority opinion.
In a country where legal truth is a very costly option, guilt is not to be doubted.
This paragraph sums it up: “That’s something you encounter again and again: People evolve. So because of the glacial pace of “justice,” we sometimes execute a graying, kindly inmate quite different from the violent felon he once was. They may have the same DNA and fingerprints, but their hearts are not the same.” Van Jones’ program on Sunday nights on CNN, The Redemption Project, shows the way prisoners evolve and when we allow space for restorative practices, healing actually happens, for both the victims impacted by the crime and the accused. There is a great deal of powerful work being done with restorative justice that builds on a human being’s capacity to evolve, especially for those who committed crimes at such a young age. If this country truly wants to evolve to a higher level, it will need to move past these low level forms of thinking about justice and begin to understand the complex issues of racism, systemic injustice, mass incarceration, and what it means to be truly “pro-life”.
2
I have no moral compunction about the death sentence for certain crimes however as long as there is a one in a gazillion chance that an innocent person could be put to death, the death penalty should become extinct. In death penalty cases there is a difference between reasonable doubt and and no doubt
The death penalty has to be realistically contextualized:
* Human population is creating an anthropogenic mass extinction event. When a dangerous person is euthanized, it benefits the biosphere.
* As with rabid dogs, some humans are "infected" with violence and mayhem. As long as they live, they can do more harm, even in prison.
* People who commit terrible crimes are themselves suffering and would like to die. The most compassionate thing we can do is to mercifully euthanize them.
* The rights of law-abiding, ethical citizens to make their lives safer by permanently removing violent people from existence outweigh the rights of violent people to exist.
* In cases where a violent person hasn't confessed to his or her crimes, before we enact the death penalty, we must be absolutely sure that the person has committed those crimes.
I see death penalty foes as being similar to abortion foes. Their premise is that all human life is sacred, no matter the context and conditions. That's a construct, not a fact.
2
The same people who vote people into elective office serve on a jury.
Would you trust those folks not to make a mistake about a person living or dying, allowing them to play god?
1
A dear and irreplaceable childhood friend of mine was gunned down during a car jacking. His death destroyed the rest of his family. I've no idea if the murderer repents, but so what? So what if the death penalty doesn't deter crime? The monster needs to be put down as punishment for what he did, not as a warning to others.
1
I'm sorry but when I read headlines that say "When We Kill, Everything you think you know about the death penalty is wrong" It's very annoying. It implies only the great and wise author has the necessary intellect and internal knowledge to know the truth and we must listen to him. Sounds to me like he made a mistake by not defending someone who was supposedly not guilty and therefore we must all now respect his opinion. To the contrary it sounds like he's the last person we should listen to. The death penalty may not curb future crime from others or do any of the other things some claim it does. But it does insure the person put to death will never be a parasite on society again. I think opinion writers get caught up in their own press and start believing everything they say can be stated as fact, and our opinions should be based on their life experiences rather than our own.
2
In the death penalty debate, it astounds me that often proponents often argue that if not death, then perpetrators of heinous crimes walk free to kill again. "He's a menace to society if he is not given the ultimate punishment," they often say, Well, when was the last time someone, sentenced to death, escaped and killed again? A life sentence takes them off the streets for good.
2
What price is there to pay for wrongfully sending a person to execution?
Perhaps if those who sentence a person to death - Judge, Prosecutor, and even jury - who is later found innocent after execution where to suffer their own execution for causing another's wrongful death there would be a lot fewer people wrongfully executed.
4
There is no doubt the criminal justice system needs reform; adequate counsel for defendants and accountability for detectives and prosecutors who deliberately withhold evidence of a defendant's possible innocence or produce fake evidence of a defendant's guilt. Stricter gun laws would also reduce crime. However, there are very bad people who have committed horrendous crimes and deserve the death penalty regardless of some idealistic morality by some people against the death penalty.
2
And killing them will achieve what exactly (other than satiate the primal lust for revenge)? So, again answer this question: should we rape rapists? If not, the government shouldn’t have the right to kill murderers either. Every other first world country has understood this. America, “the beacon of freedom”, is always a laggard for some reason
Citizens who really want to punish offenders, consider this: the lengthy appeals process gives offenders a type of entertainment. They get to meet often with lawyers. They get trips out of prison to attend hearings. They get a mental project to work on, one that often lasts decades. Is this how you want them punished? As opposed to life in prison without visits and trips to court?
1
As a career law enforcement professional in Texas, where capital punishment is enshrined, I have interviewed several hundred inmates over the years in prison units all over the state. Death row is now located in the Polunsky Unit which can only be described as a “prison within a prison”.
While I have always strongly advocated the DP, when you see in person the environments these inmates actually live in 24/7, it occurred to me there are fates worse than death and one of them would be serving life without parole in a TDC unit. You would give up all hope.
1
People who are for the death penalty seem to act as though the alternative is to let them go free! Certainly not - a life sentence is no picnic and I wonder if some given a life sentence might not prefer to die, on at least some days.
The fact is that the death penalty is not meted out fairly and does not in any way deter crime. Much crime is impulsive with no thought at all given to consequences. Of course they will face them and that might prevent further criminal behavior at least for the length of the sentence, but that is something else entirely. A life sentence does that without all the downfalls of the death penalty.
The death penalty is archaic, savage, and ultimately arbitrary. It has no place in modern society.
2
Death penalty is a problem in this country because of rampant racism. That needs to go first before having any meaningful conversation.
3
I don't want the State to execute anyone in my name. Life in prison is really a death sentence, isn't it? But the state isn't deciding when and how the convict dies. Nature decides.
4
Is it better to execute one innocent person than to let one guilty person live out their life in prison? The criminal justice system is not infallible. Just look at how many inmates have subsequently been exonerated by improved investigatory methods. I personally would chose to not execute one innocent person even if it means letting 100s of guilty people live out their lives in prison!
3
Even with the best intentions our judicial system is flawed. Minorities and the poor are at much greater risk than white or wealthy defendants. This is a fact. Employing the death penalty under these conditions is absurd.
Also, even though factoring in cost favors abolishing the death penalty, it really is awful that money factors in this decision at all.
2
I am against the death penalty for only one reason. There is no recourse if an innocent person is executed.
4
Thank you. I recall learning about the death penalty as a ten year old child and being horrified. I still feel the same way. The bottom line, if the state declared that murder is wrong, why does the state, and by extension, ME, murder people?
3
Roe v. Wade was very effective in reducing violent crime ( Freakonomics, chapter 4). Eleminate unwanted babies and lo and behold a couple decades later there are less murders. Of course tough-on-crime types like Rudy Giuliani took the credit in the 1990s. Anyone on here commenting in favor of the death penalty needs to read the innocence project. One anecdote is that the only reliable forensic evidence is DNA. Fingerprints, fibers, blood spatter, etc. are all suspect due to bias.
My own thoughts on this issue boils down to the fact that putting even one innocent person to death does not justify capital punishment.
The concept of a death penalty, whether meted out “fairly” or not is complex. As per this article, we do not see studies that prove that the death penalty is more of a deterrence than life in prison. It seems to be based more on emotional satisfaction than protection of society.
I hate the idea of belonging to a society that is okay with killing. Yet I fully understand the need of a society to defend itself against attack in times of war. On an individual level when we have the time and opportunity to judge...not so much.
Hence, I am against our government being in the business of personal executions. (With the use of prisons for profit, it is a business.). I have told my representatives as much.
But here is the kicker for me. Recently I went to see an exhibit of items taken from the Auschwitz concentration camp at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. There were photos of some of those who ran the camps, who committed unspeakable acts of horror against the innocent. (Note that this was all government sponsored, approved and quite legal.). Some were tried and hanged. Was this justice? Was this revenge? Has it stopped others from killing?
There are no simple declarations on the subject of a society’s right to kill to be made.
1
The death penalty does not work as a deterrent. It is nothing less than a way to exact vengeance for victims and their families. And while this may feel good and righteous, it’s all an illusion. The first problem is illuminated by this article. If even just one person is put to death who is innocent, then the whole concept is terribly flawed. And we all know that more than one person who has been condemned to death was innocent. It is absolutely unconscionable how many innocent Americans have been condemned to death. It always made me wonder how hypocritical people could be when they support the death penalty but don’t support abortion. The death penalty is an archaic, barbaric, and useless way to deal with criminals.
3
I'm very conflicted on this issue. When looking at recent executions, I'm generally opposed.
But what do we do with McVeigh, Paddock (had he lived after his Las Vegas slaughter), Mateen (same) and war criminals like Eichmann?
Should mass killers be treated differently? If convicted with absolutely no factual dispute, should they be permitted to continue to live?
I frankly don't have an answer.
Put them in prison for life without possibility of parole, and deny them anything that isn’t needed to sustain their life. Basic food, water only, no TV, no movies, etc. And no contact with other prisoners. Let them live their lives in perpetual monotony and boredom.
2
@ERT Are you including war criminals such as Eichman, Pol Pot, Goring, etc.? I can't fathom providing a single life supporting element for them.
America's justice system is easiest explained by two documentaries. Detailing what happens when you are rich is the Robert Durst documentary. He admitted to chopping the body up buy was still deemed innocent. On the other hand you have the central Park 5!
America's system works too well if you are rich!
2
Actually Nicholas, you confirmed everything I thought I knew about the death penalty was right.
What was wrong was your assumption you would change my mind.
I worked as a criminal defense lawyer in NYC for 25 years. I also have extensive experience as an appellate attorney and have visited some of the worst prisons in the US.
That being said what I object to in this article is the insinuation that a large amount of prisoners in our jails are innocent. That is not true. I can safely say based on my experience that 99.9 percent of people in our prisons are guilty of the crimes for which they are in prison for.
I might also add that it is a tribute to the United States that prisoners always get competent (excellent) counsel with the resources to contest their convictions.
Objection to the death penalty is purely a philosophical position that the State should not have the authority to kill someone no matter how vile the underlying crime that the prisoner has been convicted for. On that basis, and only on that basis, am I against the death penalty.
@Ann N - The author states the large majority of those convicted are guilty. But any single innocent person sentenced to death is a tragedy. (I said this, author implies it throughout.) He’s not asking us to let everyone go, just grappling with the costs and implications of an imperfect justice system which features death as a punishment.
I am a lawyer who has worked on death penalty appeals. Mr. Kristof’s piece is a fine and thoughtful analysis of what’s wrong with capital punishment. I’m glad he points out how people change over time in prison. I’ve seen that again and again: men who were young, impulsive, the victims of horrific abuse as children, often mature into very different and often estimable adults. As Mr. Kristof points out, the death penalty is both discriminatory and arbitrary. Trials are theater, and juries are easily and understandably moved by the drama presented in the courtroom and easy labels, such as “sociopath,” to see a defendant, especially one of a different race, as a stereotype of permanent criminality, not another human being formed by his environment and capable of future change.
6
How many wrongful, erroneous convictions resulting in capital punishment being imposed on those later found innocent does it take to bring into question the death penalty as justified? The correct answer is ... one.
Thank you again Nicholas Kristof for bringing facts and exposure to this question. There are undoubtedly a number of heinous and violent crimes committed by horrible human beings for which many feel that capital punishment is justified. However, we must also realize that there are too many instances of law enforcement and the justice system failing those wrongfully identified and convicted.
This is not a simple failure of the criminal justice system, it is a failure of society to realize that capital punishment is irreversible once carried out, is itself a crime, is more expensive than incarceration, robs those imposing it of their humanity, and that there are better answers to seeking appropriate punishment for even the most violent of crimes.
Let us consider joining the many other countries that have abandoned capital punishment for those better answers.
2
I wonder also why we allow the stare to EVER decide that some lives have value, and others do not. Capital punishment and war are both murders-by-state.
2
The problem with a well-researched and rational argument against the death penalty is that it can be obliterated by appealing to our basic human desire for revenge and retribution. To counter Mr. Kristof's article I would simply ask, "What would you want to do to someone who murdered *your* child?" And that is exactly how most death penalty debates go: anti death penalty advocates making reasoned and logical arguments and their opponents appealing to powerful emotional arguments in support of the victims and survivors.
I have been advocating against the death penalty for 30 years and I have found one must first acknowledge and defuse the emotional side of the argument before presenting facts.
Don't try to elicit sympathy for the accused murderer by bringing up mitigating life circumstances, such as child abuse. Acknowledge the pain of the victims' families. Say you would support the execution if it brought the murdered back to life. State that you would have done everything in your power to have stopped the murder and would have supported police using lethal force to stop it from occurring in the first place. At that point people start paying attention since you're acknowledging the terrible pain of the surviving family members and showing an understanding for the basic desire for revenge.
Only then can one shift gears to logical arguments, statistics, risk of innocents being executed, racist juries, shoddy defense, lack of deterrence, etc.
5
The country is allegedly built on immutable Judeo-Christian beliefs, governed by allegedly God-fearing men (and to a small extent women) of faith and scriptural doctrinaire; “In God We Trust” is enshrined on our currency. “Thou shalt not kill” says the Commandment; period, no ifs-ands-or-buts, no conditions, no ambiguity. The state is never justified in taking a life under any conditions if we are who we claim to be, and certainly not in the arbitrary, feckless way in which we apply our death laws.
1
Death penalty will not deter someone who does not understand cause and effect.
I served on a capital murder jury. Young man had killed a couple who ran a convenience store for $50 worth of lottery tickets. Basically executed the wife. Yet he let live two witnesses of his ethnicity. Had he not, he would not be in jail today.
To get away he had taken a car from one of the witnesses. A young man who bought "screens" taken from the car was asked if he knew they were stolen. "Of course, otherwise they wouldn't be so cheap."
It was obvious to all of use in the jury that these people had no clue that their actions could lead to prison.
Under the rules at the time, he met the criteria for the death penalty. This was 20 years ago. If I were on the same jury today, it would be a hung jury on the penalty phase.
1
I'm not certain Oscar Wilde was correct in saying, "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." I don't think it completely left barbarism at all.
5
It seems so simple to me when you take biblical vengeance out of the equation.
Murder is wrong, on that most of us can readily agree. Murder is wrong when done by individuals and its wrong when done by the state. It is either acceptable to kill or it is not, regardless of who is doing the killing.
2
The death penalty is barbaric and grossly immoral; a testament to human cruelty. As with torture, the freedom, power and agency of the condemned is reduced to zero; the power of the state augmented to infinity. Respect for the humanity and dignity of the person is correlative to his and her agency and power. Reduce it to a nullity and human dignity is obliterated. Without this fundamental respect, not only is the condemned destroyed, but also the claim to being civilized by the executing agent. The death penalty diminishes us all and serves no good purpose.
5
Thank you for a great article. You have shifted my position on this.
3
It is pointless to have a discussion about the morality of executing a murderer until we have addressed the disgraceful failure of the legal profession to deliver justice. This article perpetuates the problem by weaving together the two issues that should remain separate. First, we have to ensure that innocent people are not convicted, whether they are sentenced to death or life in prison. The legal profession has resisted all attempts to hold its members accountable for wilful disregard of evidence of innocence when the desire for a conviction trumps all. A prosecutor who withholds such evidence should be judged guilty of criminal behavior and treated accordingly. Then perhaps we would be able to trust the "justice" system to deliver an accurate verdict. Only then can we begin to debate the morality of the punishment to be meted out.
In Holland we do not have a death penalty but I am in favour of it in two situations: When somebody kills on a second occasion or when somebody tries to escape the prison after killing someone. My reason for this is not discussed here but when a person is likely to kill again we have to choose between him or his next victim.
1
This article and many of the people who have written their comments about it are all about the perpetuators of the crimes. Hardly anything is being written about the victims. What about the victims who have lost 60 years of their lives because they were murdered? What justice was there for them?
Up here in Canada we do not have capital punishment, but I am upset at how lenient the judicial system is on the guilty.
Murder someone in the most heinous manner and plead guilty due to insanity. Your 30 year sentence is suddenly dropped to 10 years, and then you get off in 5 years for good behaviour. Meanwhile, what restitution or justice was made to the relatives of the person who was murdered - nothing!
There definitely has to be more thought and action directed to the poor innocent people who are victims, and less time for the criminals!
1
Bringing in more death doesn't honor the victims and their families, It's adding savagery to the brutality of violence. People who justify death penalty are doing so out of the bloody thirst for revenge, located in the most primitive part of their brain. Look at the more advanced (Europe) societies where death penalty has been eliminated decades ago and compare murder rates to those in the US and concentrate efforts on ending gun violence in this country, instead. This is what will most effectively curb murder deaths in this country.
4
The use of the death penalty reflects the moral standards of society. When we use the death penalty to kill murderers we state loudly our moral revulsion to taking an innocents life. The murderer must pay with his own life. 100% for the death penalty and we must stop the decades long process of delay.
It's a given that our capital punishment system is a mess, but that has not shaken my fundamental belief in capital punishment. Some crimes are simply so horrible that nothing less will suffice.
I came off the fence following the rape and murder of Stephanie Roper in 1982. The particulars of the case can easily be looked up. Those responsible were caught and there is no doubting their guilt. In my view they are not fit to live. I could execute them myself and sleep peacefully.
I think that capital punishment is necessary is a shame, but that said, I do think it is necessary.
2
This is a thorny issue. There are some crimes which should forfeit one’s right to continue to draw breath in a civilized society. Those crimes aren’t the ones Trump is suggesting- he’s obviously just pandering to a cartoonish “law and order” types. Unlike the cases Mr. Kristof writes about, it should only be very rarely used in cases of prolonged torture or torture followed by the type of death that would make death from a shotgun at the foot of a bed look like a blessing. The people who commit these extraordinary horrors are so damaged or deranged that there is no reason for continued life.
But we are a corrupt and weak society, so of course there is likelihood of mistakes resulting in the deaths of innocents, or misuse in a manner that is itself evil. There’s the quandary - in protecting the innocents, we would also protect the most horrendous of murderers; there’s no guarantee that the death penalty will be applied without corruption. On the other hand, there’s also the unfortunate release back into society of Thomas Kokoraleis this year through an arcane rule that let him out for good behavior in prison (handy there were no vulnerable women he could access in prison).
Applying an “all life is precious” argument doesn’t work for this issue any better than it does for those seeking to take away a woman’s right to choose, or denying a terminally person the right to die instead of living in constant pain.
3
There is still another argument against the death penalty.
History shows that dictators need torture and executions to stay in power. Imprisonment simply does not suffice to quell free speech. So banning both the physical abuse of detainees and the death penalty actually safeguards the liberty of all citizens.
2
To me it is purely a matter of the tax payer's money it takes to execute a bad person. Given the horrendous amount of legal challenges it takes to execute a bad person, the cost of keeping the bad person in jail must be a bargain.
While traveling through China 26 years ago, I saw a man in the back of an open truck in the airplane position. It being with his hands in cuffs behind him and held up by guards so that he was standing in a bowed position. A female in a military jeep was using a loudspeaker to scream something in Chinese. I looked an a Chinese bystander and using sign language indicated I did not understand what was happening. He drew his fingers across his throat. I found out later they execute the prisoner using a copy of the Russian Markov pistol and make the prisoners parents pay for the round used in the execution - just a few cents.
The USA has more prisoners per capita than anyone else in the world. Yes violent people must be put in prison. I remember when states were putting people in prison for many years for being caught with a small quantity of weed.
The statement 'we kill' used by the author describing the death penalty is totally misleading.
It is the State and the judicial system that condemns a heinous murderer to death(e.g. series killers or those who massacre the innocent).
Once the crime has been determined beyond reasonable doubt, the criminal must be executed within 6 months or less!
Our crazy legal system of appeals and more appeals that stretch for decades is totally unfair for both the criminal and the public (most of whom would have forgotten what the criminal had done!).
I experienced my first public hanging when I was 14 yrs old, in Beirut Lebanon...and THAT put the fear of God in me !
1
Umm thought provoking. Until the powers that be change for better or worse it is what it is. There are indeed monsters out there and I never bought the bleeding heart stories of a bad childhood. To murder a human is unconscionable. How do you punish this final act? What’s fair? How do you make the grieving family whole? The current system is flawed. The sentence can take 30 years or more to be carried out. The pain that must bring is unimaginable. And in the end who’s satisfied? What a waste. Perhaps harvesting the usable organs of the condemned would be a small pay back to society. There has to be a better way but until we find it this is all we have.
Kristof fails to mention that the state of NH became the 21st state to abolish the death penalty in May of 2019, overriding a veto of the bill by the Governor. The repeal had bipartisan support.
2
I've begun to think that the number of lives made hellish by police and prosecutors is actually greater than the number of lives they save. A lot of people believe all the TV shows that make cops and prosecutors out to be heroes in search of the truth -- till they actually meet one, and find somebody who only cares whether they can shove you through the series of hoops that leads to a charge or conviction.
Many people caught up in the justice system were going through one-time crises that resulted from a confluence of factors that may never recur. Not because they were predestined by God at the beginning of the universe to be born evil and/or because God supposedly blessed them with free will. So why put them through brutal and contemptuous treatment in prisons that don't even pretend to try to make them better people? That in fact make them worse people? That disrupt any attempt to get a job, have a career, build a relationship, have a family?
I think one factor in wrongful convictions is the Anglo-Saxon tradition that prosecutors just go by what the police say. I think prosecutors should have to speak face to face with suspects before approving charges. A French-style inquisitorial system would also help deal with the fact many poorer defendants have poor representation.
2
Just because you find a handful of cases that went wrong is no reason to deny justice to the majority of cases that are clearly right.
5
@Jane
Really?
What would you think if you (or someone you love) were convicted and executed for a crime you didn't commit?
1
I can hardly disagree with the points of this column. I have to admit that I don't have anyone in our immediate or extended family who has ever suffered from a brutal murder. So I have not been tested and hopeful I never will be.
That said, even beyond the danger of false convictions due to either due to prosecutorial misconduct (most of the examples here) and/or bias on the part of the jury (also somewhat alluded here is some respects), there is the question of whether it is right even from a so-called "biblical" perspective. If you go by the "Lex Talionis", obviously, clearly yes, but if you go by the gospel, it talks about our obligation to forgive those who do us wrong and even to pray for them. This is far easier said than done, clearly, and something we Christians struggle all our lives with finding some way to meet it, but we should leave it to the person to sincerely repent and seek to reform his/her life in prison to one that brings others to repentance. I don't know with cases like Ted Bundy where the man seemed just evil, but I don't really see the _gospel_ permitting us to show no mercy to sinners when Christ died for us while we too were yet sinners.
Spending time rotting in a cell may bring the person to think about the crime he/she did. Though too late, at least he/she might finally recognize his/her own rottenness for exactly what it was. Isn't that better than "death" with no remorsefulness? Isn't repentance far more important than a death sentence?
1
Thank you Mr. Kristoff. This is an excellent piece of work which needs wider exposure. I have never understood the death penalty as being the ultimate punishment. If death penalty supporters want to really punish real perpetrators they’d support life imprisonment. I can’t think of anything worse than being confined in a prison for 30-40 years. I suppose some would actually prefer death as an “easy way out” compared to a lifetime of confinement.
4
The best argument against capital punishment is the simplest: a state shouldn't have to power to kill anyone because it is subject to the emotional vagaries of politics. It is the best because it is the most likely to be supported by a broad demographic and political swath of the population. Every other reason Mr. Kristof writes about in this column except for the randomness argument comes perilously close to making excuses for murder, and killers, including jailhouse conversions, which are a dime a dozen. That's always going to be unconvincing and infuriating for some.
Here's my best argument for the death penalty:
If someone were to murder a member of my family I would want Old Testament style retribution. If I am reasonably assured the government will see to it, then I will not take the law into my own hands. Without that assurance, I might seek to murder the murderer myself. If everyone did that, vigilante justice would run rampant. The death penalty thus prevents vigilante justice.
That's the best argument I've got. It's not strong enough to overcome the still real punishment of a prison sentence and all of the moral concerns articulated so well by Kristof.
2
...and now look internationally: countries without the death penalty have much lower rates of homicide--and by a wide margin. Of course, they also don't have unrestricted gun ownership. But the point is these two go hand in hand in a country obsessed with violence in its history, its entertainment (if we can call glorying in violence entertainment), its sport, its gun laws and its culture of retribution. Really, what is to be expected in a place where violence is actually the norm.
5
Thank you for this column. You covered all the bases. I just hope lawmakers read it.
3
Why is it that 56% of Americans are in favor of the death penalty when the justice system has an error rate of perhaps at least 4.1%, and possibly higher? Until this question is answered, no remedy for the support of capital punishment will be found.
4
I am a judge in Canada where thankfully we no longer have the death penalty. I say “thankfully’ because I realize that even the best and most well-intentioned judges are fallible. This includes appellate judges. And, for that matter, juries.
Fallibility is reason enough to eliminate the death penalty.
6
@me DNA is very rarely available in murder cases. Since the first case in which DNA evidence led to the exoneration of an innocent person (Kirk Bloodsworth) at least 43 people have been wrongly convicted and later exonerated.
And we know that every human institution is bound to get it wrong some of the time.
1
I feel bad for the victims who never get the justice they deserve.
1
@me
If you actually read the article, you will see that in the US there is reluctance to even do DNA testing sometimes.
1
It may be that the US and Canada are so fundamentally different that a comparison of the two countries' approach to capital punishment is of no value - but I don't think so. Up north, we have essentially the same cultural influences - we play the same video games, watch the same TV and movies, listen to the same music, engage with the same social media. We have similar judicial systems - presumption of innocence, trial by jury (mostly), a fiercely independent defense bar. We have an independent media that will widely publicize violent crimes, and the punishment that is meted out.
Our last execution for murder was in 1962 and we abolished the death penalty officially 14 years later.
Our murder rate is a fraction of that in the US. One reason, of course, is that we have more rigorous gun control. But if capital punishment were genuinely a deterrent, one might think that our abolition of it would lead to more violent crime. The opposite is the case.
7
@PHH
I think Canadians are fundamentally different from Americans. We just seem to be kinder, more socially conscious somehow. Less aggressive. Less violent. Quieter.
I have long been opposed to capital punishment for practical, not moral reasons: fact skepticism. The facts of a murder do not get up off the pavement and walk into the trial court. They are presented to a jury by the testimony of witnesses and by physical evidence. And eyewitness testimony is subject to at least two possible mistakes. The witness may 'see' facts that did not occur: pedestrian on a sidewalk hears loud explosion like a gunshot, turns and sees victim falling to ground and sees identifiable defendant running away. Although the explosive sound was actually a car backfire, that witness' testimony would convict defendant. Second, a witness might have seen/experienced the event accurately but does not remember exactly nor testify accurately in court: memory failure. Far too often juries have convicted the wrong person.
That said, in a case where there is no possible doubt that defendant committed the act of murder - I am thinking of the hijacked TWA aircraft many years ago where television cameras and photographers recorded the defendant's clearly identified face in the cockpit window, holding a pistol to the head of the clearly identified pilot-victim and then firing the shot that killed the pilot.
Would you choose to have your state pay a total of $1.6 million of taxpayer money to provide food and shelter for this murderer for the rest of his life? I have no compunction in favoring his execution.
2
This can be resolved by a verdict of Life in Prison without a possibility of a Pardon, except if evidence shows, like DNA that the person was innocent.To be put in prison isolated from other inmates for life is a greater punishment then Capital punishment.
1
Then what do you do with the inmate sentenced to life in prison, who then murders a corrections officer?
2
This argument is way too old: In the US we had it already in the 19th century. In 20th century, after far too many deaths in the first half, European countries and many others abolished the death penalty in the second half.
The state exists to safeguard civil society, not to end life.
8
Are we allowed to make exceptions for the Mansons and Bundys of the world? I'm also pretty sure when Bin Laden was executed, most Americans were (maybe) a little happy about that.
4
Its long been my opinion that pro-death penalty supporters are intellectually like a child, specifically like a teen. Teens normally have fantasies of retribution that often manifest in killing, hurting, etc. Most teens grow out that phase, into adjusted adults. Regretfully too many adults never truly leave their teen-mind behind and as such things like being pro-death penalty - an act of state sponsored retribution - never passes.
Also, most of these same adults refuse to look at the evidence that the DP does not work as a deterrence. But that's a huge problem in this nation right now. The refusal of fact based thinking. Its at epidemic levels.
Personally,the State should not be involved in sponsoring revenge for others. The State gains nothing by killing criminals. The community gains nothing. And in many,nay cases even the victims families dont gain much either. There have been numerous accounts of victims families who don't want the DP for the murderer of their family member. Or who after the execution, don't feel any relief. Don't feel avenged, and in fact, many feel worse.
My tax dollars go to a lot of things, many of which I don't necessarily like, or think bring much gains to me or my communities. However, I get-it, accept the greater good theme of the unseen benefits.
But supporting the uselessness that is the death penalty, is one I wish I could refuse to pay. Its time we stop this nonsense.Time we as a nation stop seeking retribution.
12
Kristof and others who like to dance around in the gray areas of capital punishment, raise good and moral questions that indeed need careful consideration. However in those cases which clearly show malice intent, gang bangers, school and church shooters for example, justice needs to be meted out swiftly and the sentence carried out post haste. Capital punishment may not deter similar crimes but that's not it's purpose. It's to rid the scourge which has used deadly force against another for personal gain or gratification.
3
The United States of America styles itself as a leader of the world. Yet in many things that define civilization, we lag far behind. Examples include our late abolition of slavery, retaining the death penalty, refusal to provide health care for the poor, and our inability to reduce wealth inequality. We take too long to learn from the rest of the world.
10
An excellent, thoughtful article. ButI think there is one more reason for ending capital punishment which Mr. Kristof didn't discuss. I believe it brutalizes the public to murder people in perceived retribution for crimes. I loathe the self-righteous, frankly blood-thirsty tone with which pro-capital punishment people justify their position.
13
I'll never understand how Christians can support the death penalty. The sixth commandment is crystal clear:
THOU SHALL NOT KILL
There are no exceptions for heinous crimes, or upholding values ,or deterring crime. Stop trying to justify and rationalize something that is unequivocally forbidden.
Yes, they have recently changed the wording to " thou shall not murder", or not take "innocent life". More ways to rationalize.
Sorry folks, killing is killing, and the scriptures make it pretty clear that God has reserved that deed to only himself.
8
If we we as a country believed that every human life is valuable, no matter what that person does, we would not have the death penalty. As long as we have the death penalty as part of our laws, no American can credibly call himself or herself "pro life."
9
Yet another blight on the American “justice” system and source of international disdain. The death penalty is a failed policy. It does far more harm than good and America should outlaw it like most civilized countries did long ago.
7
Just as another commentator stated, I was about 11 or 12 years old when I questioned the reasoning of murdering a human being for murdering a human being. I wondered what gave courts the right to do such a thing when if I had killed a person for killing another I would be sent to prison. I always heard the argument, “an eye for an eye,” but that is not true. If a person broke into my home and stole from me, am I therefore permitted to break into their home and steal from them?
Without ever reading any of the stories in regards to wrongful convictions, studies and statistical data I knew that the death penalty was fundamentally wrong. I always said what if a person was innocent.
As time went on, I read those stories, watched those documentaries of those wrongfully convicted of crimes and of those put to death and later they were determined innocent. The people who sit on death row and even with large amounts of evidence proving their innocence, are still put to death because a court determines that there were no “errors” in their trials, as if proof of innocence does not count as a trial error.
It is estimated that up to 25% of those incarcerated of all crimes are innocent of the charges, and the lucky ones may do a few years and get out only to spend the rest of their lives being denied government programs, employment, housing, and the respect of others for something they did not do.
When it comes to the death penalty; a single murder of an innocent human is one too many.
9
The argument against the death penalty is simple: The state, demonstrably, cannot be trusted to take life justly in all cases, so it should be trusted in none.
18
Sentencing the innocent to death is a strong enough argument against the death penalty. But you throw in Scotty Morrow, blame one of his victims (a woman who hurt his damaged sense of himself), and decry his death sentence because he showed extraordinary remorse.
Nearly all criminals whose lack of empathy gave them freedom to take the life of another suffered shocking child victimhood. This is not the basis to overturn or rethink the death penalty. The fact that innocent people are murdered by the state - and that the punishments tend to be aligned with money and power - is reason enough.
Morrow's girlfriend doesn't deserve the blame for the murders, and Morrow's remorse only serves those who are interested in accepting it.
2
With regards to the death penalty, the USA is out of step with virtually all liberal democracies. The European Union holds a strong position against the death penalty; its abolition is a key objective for the Union's human rights policy. Abolition is a pre-condition for entry into the European Union.
In all of Europe, only Belarus continues to actively use capital punishment.
The Roman Catholic church is also very clear regarding capital punishment. Pope Francis has declared the death penalty wrong in all cases. Last year he stated that “regardless of how it is carried out”, the death penalty is “per se contrary to the gospel, because it entails the willful suppression of a human life that never ceases to be sacred in the eyes of its creator and of which – ultimately – only God is the true judge and guarantor”.
So how so-called Christians in your so-called Christian nation can defend the death penalty is beyond me. I am pretty sure that a large part of the anti-abortion “pro-life” crowd wholeheartedly supports the death penalty.
6
A strong deterrent should be in place for law enforcement who frame innocent men and women for crimes for the sake of disposing of an investigation. This seems to have led to the execution of innocent people.
And since I am here, I used to think the death penalty was a valid option, but now that I am older and understand life and our mandate here on earth, I believe that it is barbaric.
5
Thank you, for this extremely well written and argued piece of journalism. We owe you a debt and I hope this works to enlighten others. I for one will print it and leave it around to be read by many.
6
Human laws and the justice system are like all human artifacts: flawed by the limitations of their creators.
Any claims of moral clarity reveal lawyers for what they are: two-bit philosophers crossed with accountants. These are not the type I want defending my rights vs. the incredible power of the state, and most certainly not when my life is in the balance.
1
I live in the first jurisdiction in the British commonwealth to abandon this utterly reprehensible practice - 1922. That this debate is occurring In your country near a hundred years hence is incredible if not bizarre. I think, however, it says more about deeply engrained racism than any other else. Good luck with well needed but belated reform.
9
Actually quickly enforcing the death penalty without much deliberation, is the kind of death penalty that advocates of it favor as it does "save money", as it is done fast, without thought. This is the kind of death penalty advocated by Trump on full display in his full page ad, not the thoughtful, deliberative kind which would require looking at the actual evidence to find the truth in the case.
4
Frankly, our prison system is incapable of safely locking up murderers and keeping other prisoners safe from them. By advocating for only life in prison, Kristof and others condemn numerous inmates and sometimes guards to violence and death within the walls of correctional institutions. Inmate on inmate violence is often forgotten by the anti-death penalty advocates - fact is some murderers enjoy killing or have no feelings about it at all, and by leaving these predators in the system, others pay a price.
1
You seem to be looking at this the wrong way round. Firstly,You are equating those prisoners in death row as being the same as those who prey on other prisoners. From what I have read this are not necessarily true. The other idea that the only way to decrease violence in prison is to kill off prisoners is completely wrong. I agree something needs to be done about the level of violence in our criminal system. However what we need is a better system of oversight of those who guard the prisons and better in-house education and care for those inside including mental health care. How do we afford this? Stop putting everyone in prison. You should already know the stats on that.
1
.... and many of those sentenced to death don't fit that description at all.
In Junior High (so a long time ago, when there was still such a thing), I wrote an essay arguing against the death penalty. I did not have any data or research; I didn't even know how racist and classist it's application was. But at 13, I knew this: human beings are fallible, and the likelihood of wrongful conviction therefore existed. But we are not God, we shouldn't allow the State to play God for us, and we DEFINITELY should not allow an imperfect State to murder innocent people. Not even one.
3
It’s a simple construct. Humans are inherently fallible. The death penalty process was designed by humans. Therefore, the death penalty process is fallible. We see this everyday with human endeavors across the board but somehow think that adding multiple reviews and appeals will perfect this particular process. The death penalty should be abolished for the simple reason that we know that we will not get it (and have not gotten it) right every time, and no innocent man or women should ever be executed.
1
As much as I agree with many of the authors opinion on this piece there is one glaring omission, the victims and their families.
"When faced with the possibility of capitol punishment the defendant pled guilty in a plea deal and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole."
For this reason alone, capitol punishment should be enacted in all 50 states with the following provision, the burden of proof in the capitol punishments cases shall be "beyond a shadow of a doubt" and only to applied in the most extreme circumstances.
My thoughts start with the victims and end with their families and they alone are the determining factor if the death penalty is warranted.
3
Execution can’t bring the victim back nor assuage the loss of the family. It is simply the application of an eye-for-an-eye philosophy that only satisfies a thirst for vengeance. Vengeance is never righteous
2
Killing the criminal won't bring the victim back. Victim's families deserve justice, not retribution, and if another death is the only way they can find closure, they need therapy.
1
The facts as presented are well known to me although I have what I consider a simple interest in the matter given its import. The fact that so many, especially people like Mr. Trump, remain poorly informed is a good example of how terribly important education and reading are and that without them we all fail.
3
Here is, in my very strong opinion, the real reason we should not be participating in capital punishment.
I am speaking from as a doctor. As a third year medical student I was mentored as I pronounced death for the first time. The person I had known--she was actually one really mean lady and tot at all likable. Still after the event I was shaking. She even had this ratty stuffed animal (but she liked it) and I found myself placing it between her dead arm and her dead body. I still remember the feeling-I still remember the shaking--I still remember how it affected me.
Decades later--I get sad when a patient passes but I am calloused. I can respectfully do what must be done and move on to care for others, hopefully with compassion. But I realize that some visceral sense of awe for life has been lost (or at least buried) in me.
I have never deliberately killed a person--or have I? As a society member, as a US citizen, as a Missouri citizen--I am an unwilling executioner by proxy. We as a society must maintain the awe for life. We must not feel compelled to lower ourselves to the actions for which we are administering lethal punishment. We must question the impact on the immediate executioner and worry for them.
We are not meant to kill each other--to do so, either directly or indirectly, kills something (our innate awe for human life) within ourselves.
12
You can always find anecdotal evidence. Any system of justice is going to have type I and type II errors - guilty going free or innocent being convicted. There are always anecdotes demonstrating one or the other of these errors. The trick is to find a balance society is will to live with. Our jury system and other safeguards ensure they are very few type II errors. I can live with that.
1
You're ok with type II errors that result in a death sentence? Because you believe they are rare? Really? (That is, incidentally, the precise opposite of the principle our system of justice is founded on.)
1
The article is about capital punishment. Would you be okay with you or a loved one being convicted and sentenced to death for a crime you didn’t commit? Would you be okay with just being another anecdotal story?
1
There are a few simple questions one who supports capital punishment should answer: 1) how many innocent people is it ok to execute in order to have a system of capital punishment? Mr. Kristoff cites a rate of 4.1%; is that ok to supporters? 2) how much additional cost should we accept to have this system? and 3) Does it matter if there is no deterrent value to the system? Currently, supporters of the system would say the error rate is 0%, it saves money, and it is a strong deterrent, all wrong. Thanks to Mr. Kristoff for publishing this reminder. We have all heard this before; it must be a very hard lesson to learn.
3
As capital punishment has been shown not to be more of a deterrent than imprisonment, its only excuse for existence is revenge, plain and simple. As a any other person I rage at certain acts of violence and injustice and, had I the nerve, I could easily kill the perpetrators without remorse. However, I like to think of the state as being a cool and rational entity, unemotional, acting based on calculated reason, not a frenzy of revenge.
4
If the death penalty must continue, it must be so that if the executed is later found innocent, then those advocating the execution must be executed. That includes the prosecutor, the judge and the jury. For isn't the execution of an innocent man cold-blooded murder?
11
Most of the rest of the world regards the death sentence as barbaric, only for uncivilised nations. It's like owning guns, in more ways than one. It signifies a country that enjoys killing its own.
It's not dissimilar to the rest of the world being surprised by the weird panic's that's evoked at the thought of a state ensuring everyone has access to health services, or a child's education, or maintaining road infrastructure, or a postal service, and viewing these (or some of them) as "socialism" or "communism" and something to be feared.
Societies that look after their own in times of need are stronger, not weaker.
8
The rest of the world also holds many less people incarcerated. And those incarcerated are treated like humans not animals in a cage. I don’t think the rest of the world argument has any place here.
2
“ A majority of Americans (56 percent, according to Gallup) favor capital punishment, believing that it will deter offenders or save money and presuming that it will apply only to the vilest criminals and that mistakes are not a serious risk.” I respectfully disagree with this conclusion. I believe that those favoring the death penalty have little or no concern about its deterrent effect or its costs. The primary reason they support it is vengeance, “an eye for an eye.” Putting myself in the shoes of someone who has lost a loved one to a murder I can understand the desire for vengeance, but that is why we do not have vigilantism and why it is the state, not the victim or victim’s family that prosecutes criminal cases. Unfortunately the criminal court system is very much influenced by politics, especially where judges and prosecutors are elected, which is another reason why the death penalty is sought in some jurisdictions.
Those who oppose the death penalty are often described as being more concerned with the murderers than their victims. While I can’t speak for all death penalty abolitionists, I can say that I have no sympathy for those who are guilty of murder. However, regardless of how repulsive and evil someone may appear to be I believe that the ritualistic taking of a life by the state as punishment is also repulsive and corrodes our humanity.
9
I worked as a prosecutor in a NJ county for about eight years. I worked on the first death penalty appeal to come before the court since the state reimposed the death penalty. I was young and did not give it much thought at the time. When I say young, I mean under 30. Another attorney was the lead prosecutor and assigned me one small legal issue. That defendant was never executed.
I have known for a long time that the death penalty was wrong. The cost alone justifies letting it go and using those funds towards something more useful that will, in fact, deter murder. Execution is not that thing. Frankly, the thought of spending the rest of my life in prison is more of a deterrence than the thought of being executed.
It is time to put an end to the death penalty. The irony of those who support it is that I bet many are also anti-abortion. They cannot claim to be pro-life and support the death penalty.
8
The taking of a life is still the taking of a life, whether it be by a criminal or a judge and jury.
What strikes me as disingenuous is those who oppose abortion because it is the "taking of an innocent life," on the one hand, but blithely look away when an individual, sometimes innocent, is sentenced and, ultimately, put to death.
For a long time, I strongly opposed the death penalty. More recently, however, I came to believe that some crimes were so heinous, so outrageous, so brutal and so evil that it was the only punishment that fit the crime. That said, the clear increase in cases where incarcerated convicts were later proven innocent has been sufficient to once again persuade me that a system that puts innocent people to death is simply unacceptable.
Until we have a system that judges fairly, honestly and correctly, and prevents the conviction and death of innocents, we need to abolish the death sentence, and let the prison system, flawed though it may be as well, mete out our justice, sans capital punishment.
2
I appreciate your honesty here.
I think the key data point in this opinion piece is that ~4% of those sentenced to death might not be guilty of that specific crime. That means some ~100 people out of a population of ~300m who are potentially at risk for not committing that specific murder.
No mention of whether or not those convicted were hardened criminals with track records of violence against others.
No sympathy other than pro forma comments for the victims of the murders.
Rather, decades old cases characterized by police abuse and racism are the facts cited by the author.
Based on his flimsy analysis and obvious bias in favor of explaining away the accountability and culpability of the convicted, Mr Kristof's argument does not persuade.
Not a serious piece. The author lists cases that abundantly favor his thesis and avoids serious discussion, numbers, attitudes, consequences etc. You can easily find hundreds of cases warranting executions. Furthermore, he is so much tilted on the side of abolishing the capital punishment that it almost makes no sense to engage with him on this matter. Light afternoon reading, at a high school level.
3
He discusses the consequences of abolishing the death penalty - there are none.
1
"I have studied the death penalty for more than half my lifetime. I have debated it hundreds of times. I have heard all the arguments, analyzed all the evidence I could find, measured public opinion when it was opposed to the practice, when it was indifferent, and when it was passionately in favor. Always I have concluded the death penalty is wrong because it lowers us all; it is a surrender to the worst that is in us; it uses a power - the official power to kill by execution - that has never elevated a society, never brought back a life, never inspired anything but hate."
Mario Cuomo wrote that in a Daily News Op-ed ("Death penalty is dead wrong: It's time to outlaw capital punishment in America" October 2, 2011).
I remember listening to him on radio dismantling the arguments of a caller who favored death penalty. I couldn't find the transcript, but his op-ed pretty much nails it.
More importantly, he stuck to his beliefs even when it was politically convenient to abandon them and vetoed bills that'd have allowed death penalty in New York.
7
"policies that actually would reduce crime — like lead removal, early childhood programs, career academies, job training, gang violence initiatives ... and programs for at-risk young people"
No, this would involve actually spending money. Instead, we should make guns easily accessible so citizens can protect themselves. Easy access to weapons that results in finality of life means a high murder rate. So we'll solve that with the death penalty - our society's solution that also results in finality of life.
The death penalty is an error for one reason only, it is impossible to correct prosecutorial mistakes. The death penalty is richly deserved in many instances, but that doesn't let the government off the hook for prosecutorial mistakes or malfeasance. There can be a prison of permanent solitary confinement in the absence of exoneration, and the government can then correct any mistakes. With a death penalty mistakes cannot be corrected.
2
in the end, we can never 100% guarantee "truth" in the conviction -- the death penalty does not give justice, does not give closure but leaves behind even greater destruction and grief and pain
1
I especially like the argument against executing people that states that "people evolve" from their sordid, murderous past into better people.
Think of Brett Kavanaugh as a prime example. Or former relentless and dogged prosecutor Kamala Harris, now even-handed and benevolent defender of all. Or Trump, business and marital cheat, now beloved darling of the evangelical right.
1
But people do evolve: look at John Boehner who said marijuana would never become legal but is now a well-paid spokesperson for the legalization lobby! Now that’s evolution at it’s finest!
Two problems with the death penalty are 1) for truly monstrous offenses, execution is too kind; solitary confinement for life would be better (the 'cost' argument against this is frivolous because most of the expense of a prison system are 'sunk costs' anyway). 2) too many innocent defendants who have been railroaded by some very bad state justice systems
I'd support the death penalty to people like Charlie Mason, people who are a danger to society whose guilt is indisputable and are beyond rehabilitation. To these people, it is not so much about punishment. It is about keeping others safe from these people.
Alas, the current system, like many other social concepts, such as social welfare, is too flaw. Not only the innocent might end up going to the death chamber but also the guilty could use loopholes and stalled tactics to get a stay for decades.
The current debate about death penalty, like other hot button issues like abortion, muddle many different dimensions. By that I mean the religious, the emotional, the rational, the causal and the practical. To untangle them, people need to look at them at each dimension, so to arrive at a given set of universal principles without sacrificing the individual salient factors of each case
1
Defender of the unluckiest of mortals, Kristof wins many battles and presumably inspires others to do the same by exposing realities of unlucky lives.
Exposed unjust death sentence dramas emphasize the realities of some terrible, sometimes intentional injustices of the justice system, drawing defenders. Hopefully, this will spread to greater justice for the wrongly convicted who “only” receive years-long prison sentences.
1
It’s this kind of thing, among many other stupidities and hypocrisies, that creates the great contempt that most of the world really feels for Americans. I’m sorry to say that but it’s true.
4
Kristof did not take on one big point. That prosecutors can use the death penalty as leverage to get confessions & help in some cases. Also what do you do about a person who murders in prison? And I still have trouble believing that the death penalty costs more than housing, feeding, medical care, etc someone for say 50 years, even though that's what's stated over & over.... It should definitely be the last resort. I think a independent.panel should review each case after the sentence, to make sure..... And I'm still not sure how I feel about it ...
4
It might be useful to examine the experience of other countries again. There have been a number of studies of the situation in Norway where counseling and work in prisons is used to replace death penalties.
4
Consider that a prisoner with a life sentence can work in prison and much of that prison wage can go to the family of the victim.
I would rather money goes to those who have lost loved ones rather than to supporting the cost of endless appeals for the death penalty.
While no amount of money compensates for the loss of a life, the least that a killer can do is provide a regular stipend to the survivors to help support them in creating the best future that they can without their loved one.
3
Prisoners' wages (if we dare call it so) are barely enough to buy toothpaste. In CT, prisoners had to be indigent for 90 consecutive days for the state to provide toothpaste. i.e., if the prisoner had no balance in their account for 89 days and a family member sent him $5 on day 90, that prisoner was not indigent. Life in prison, contrary to what many think is not a walk in the park. Our society may not be killing everyone convicted of a crime, but prison is punishment. It is physical and psychological punishment. I am not advocating getting rid of prisons, I am simply clarifying that life in prison is a horrible punishment. Sparing a convict's life is not a gift to them; it is a gift to us as a society.
It may be hard to believe that it is cheaper to abolish the death penalty, but this matter has been litigated over and over and that is what always comes up. The death penalty is an economic drain to our justice system and our principles as Americans. I can attest to this as a former public defender who strived to uphold the constitution and who believes in the American Justice System. Not as a system that is perfect, but better yet, a system that seeks true justice.
2
I'm a retired criminal justice professor who taught a graduate seminar and an undergraduate survey course on capital punishment for over 15 years. I had hoped that, by the time I retired, practitioners and judges alike would have finally accepted the mountain of evidence showing how dangerously flawed is the capital system, the death penalty would simply no longer be imposed, effectively ending it without SCOTUS intervention.
Sadly, the capital system continues to lurch forward.
Perhaps your column will help educate readers on the reality of capital punishment in this country and help to end the purest example of racism and classism at work today in the American justice system.
13
Several years ago I was part of a movement that helped eliminate the death penalty in New Jersey. Since then, there has been no increase in murders or felony murders, crime in NJ is on the decline while gang violence is increasing as in other urban areas. But we (the state) have not killed any inmates. Thank God!
11
Not "thank God." Thank YOU for your public service.
I read a few paragraphs and set it aside continuing that pattern until I reached the end. I would urge every American to read it in the same manner. The words go directly to our values and humanity. At the end, I was relieved that my state, Michigan, abandoned the death penalty nearly two centuries ago.
Many Americans refer to our nation as a Christian nation. Is there a single reference in the Gospels that justifies a person or government killing another person? Others point to our Abrahamic traditions. Is there a greater Commandment than ‘Thou shall not kill’? Still other look to the Golden Rule. No version of it would support the death penalty.
If we want to reduce violent crime, it appears that the Congress, our state legislatures, and our systems of justice get it wrong. The prison population in Michigan increased more than tenfold from the 1970s to the 2000s. Did anyone feel tenfold safer? I think not.
Now we have an administration that wants to rush people to execution. Instead, we need to regain our humanity.
Thank you Mr. Kristof
12
This is a very persuasive article written by Mr. Kristof. However, most of article can also be interpreted to support the case for drastically watering down the rights of those condemned to death, including the right to multiple appeals. You say it is unjust and expensive to execute people decades after the crime they have allegedly committed? Fine, simplify the process and limit their right to appeal. Execute them sooner. Mandate that all executions must be carried out within a year of the initial sentence if it has not been overturned on appeal by then.
2
And how would this address the issues of wrongful convictions of the innocent, as discussed in this article? Convictions of persons with true alibis never raised by their (far underpaid) attorneys? Convictions based on forced “confessions?” When so many death row and other inmates are being released based on DNA evidence showing they were not the perpetrators, how can you live with yourself knowing innocent people (almost all of whom are poor minorities) have been executed for crimes they did not commit? Burying your mistakes seems an untenable solution to the high cost of defending capital cases.
2
This was well written Mr. Kristof. Thank you. I was a public defender for 20 years. I had the opportunity to defend the last man tried for a capital crime in CT (there have been other retrials since) with a fellow attorney in 2012. My client was spared his life. The research you have provided was all available at the time of our trial in 2012, very little has changed. The death penalty was abolished in CT in 2012 and was later found unconstitutional by the CT Supreme Court. To actually have the people, the state, the prosecutor seek the death penalty of your client is shocking. Execution is treated simply as a choice by the jury, an alternative, never mind we are talking about a human in the courtroom. There is no denying some defendants have done horrific things and society deserves justice and to make itself safe; but the death penalty is devoid of any justice. Not for the defendant, society nor the victim. The death penalty only stirs hate and our society is the worse for it. By the way I was a public defender and I dedicated my life to advocacy for the indigent. I was proud of my work and my colleagues were/are fantastic attorneys as well. The CT Public Defenders Capital Unit is a legal jewel. May your article reach many many people.
5
"Schulz added: 'I’m personally of the opinion that the death penalty serves no purpose whatsoever, and I think it’s immoral.'"
This pretty much sums up my opinion after years of work related to the criminal justice system as a probation officer and later as the provider of services for alternative sentencing.
Mr. Kristof eloquently sums up the rest of my opinion: it costs too much, racial over- and undertones create false jury verdicts and it is fallible. The wrong person may be executed. We can remedy to some extent life in prison for an innocent person but not for one who has been executed.
If one studies the oral tradition behind the Old Testament, one will find that even when death is prescribed for various crimes, it is seldom if ever carried out. Mercy is more important.
5
Mr. Kristof, Long-time appreciative reader of your columns here. Also survivor of a death row inmate in your home state. Also a volunteer for a failed initiative in your home state to abolish the death penalty in 1999-2000.
Attempted to advocate and "be a friend" to this individual after his conviction which backfired. In retrospect he was abusive even behind bars. There was a history of violence and abuse.
The families of his final victims will never recover and neither will his survivors (two of us barely escaping) whose psyches and finances were permanently shattered.
Furthermore, your home state is spending $4 million in post-conviction appeals expenses PER DEATH ROW INMATE according to the Death Penalty Center--even though the death penalty is currently on moratorium! These appeals last for decades in that state, leaving the victims' families and survivors in painful limbo.
Agree with other commenters that victims are entirely neglected in this discussion, those who pay the ultimate price for patriarchy and (mostly) male violence.
It is also true that violent offenders are a public safety threat. Most are armed in addition to being physically violent (and manipulative).
What is the most practical and humane solution all the way around? More efficient use of DNA for capital cases? Life WITHOUT PAROLE for those convicted?
I don't know anymore. Too busy protecting self and attempting to heal: a lifelong endeavor.
4
So the problem is unethical prosecutions, not the death penalty. if someone deserves it, they should get it.
3
America's so-called administration of justice is an administration of vengeance. Retribution and retaliation have nothing to do with righting the wrongs that victims and their families have suffered by criminal conduct. Justice is about, or should be about, efforts to set things right, and state-sponsored killing, which is nothing more than vengeance, doesn't get the job done.
As Coretta Scott King once said: "The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind."
9
on a case by case basis, I support the death penalties. some of the crimes are so horrific it means nothing to me that the perpetrators are executed. But that ignores the possibility of an innocent person being put to death. For that reason I oppose the death penalties until we can be assured no innocent people can be convicted.
But the author has raised one issue that may make uncomfortable reading for abolishionist. Death penalty convicts have a 160 time more likely to be exonerated. So if the convicts were wrongly convicted but sentenced to life imprisonment, then will they get a fair post conviction hearing? They may just rot in jail because there will no advocacy groups supporting them. Paradoxically abolishing death penalty may result in fewer conviction overturned. Food for thought.
1
One of my favorite professors while I was a resident made a comment to me while we were doing surgery that really stuck with me. He was opposed to the death penalty for the simple reason that you couldn’t make murder taboo if state-sanctioned murder existed.
4
That's a real stroke of genius. By that reasoning any act of self defense is off limits because it sanctions violence
1
"The death penalty has been applied to at least 222 crimes in the Anglo-American legal system..."
the death penalty _is_ applied to crimes like drug possession, drug selling, treason, insurrection and blasphemy,... in countries like china, iran and saudi arabia. instead of the present perfect tense, the present tense is accurate in some cases.
even if the death penalty is not eliminated, its scope could be greatly reduced in some countries.
there are also grey areas about rape, manslaughter, murder in the second degree, negligent homicide, intent to kill, and many other definitions that take lawyers and legal scholars to sort out and that now typically result in prison sentences in the US but might still receive a death sentence in other countries.
as for murder in the first degree (premeditated intent to kill), life sentence without parole is cheaper (saves police and legal resources for other guilty people who might go free), faster, less arbitrary (all murderers get the same sentence), less emotional, and reversible in cases of innocence; it removes the guilty from society too; and saves the sensibilities and labor of prison officials, court officials and legal scholars who must design killing procedures that are deemed sufficiently humane. (public executions, beheading, bullets and hanging are no longer deemed sufficiently humane in the US, although perhaps still practiced in other countries.)
3
You had me until Morrow. Scotty Morrow brutally murdered two women and brutally and violently assaulted another. Why is a man standing up for him? That's an utterly unforgivable act of male violence. It is easy to understand the Willingham case and easy to be sympathetic argument that we should not have the death penalty. It's a lot harder to care that Morrow deserves any sympathy no matter how much remorse he felt.
4
Killing another human being is a barbaric act. Criminals deserve severe punishment for the atrocities they commit. But, killing them in a supposed civilized society is also barbaric (and anachronistic as other readers have stated). The answer? Life in prison without chance of parole. Take the "savings" from the elimination of death row appeals and parole hearings and dedicate it to mental health services that target those at high risk for violence, especially children and young adults from abusive families.
3
I am mostly opposed to the death penalty, but not entirely so.
I do believe that there are those individuals who so completely break the human bond, that the ultimate punishment is the just one.
I remember the death row interviews of Ted Bundy, crying, terrified by the thought of what was about to happen to him, trying to blame pornography, trying to bargain with the offer of information of where more victims bodies could be found...in other words experiencing all the terror and pain he had inflicted on his countless young female victims.
I remember thinking why should this man ever see another sunrise, experience another burst of laughter at a joke etc.
In the most rare of cases, I believe the death penalty is justified.
12
@michael anton
Death penalty support
When death penalty polls have a "sometimes" answer included, for the question "do you support the death penalty for murder" death penalty support has gone up to 86%, in the US (2013)
When specific cases, like the one you provided, are used, death penalty support rises substantially.
3
@Dudley SHarp and when given the option of life without parole (LWOP), respondents overwhelmingly reject capital punishment for murder. See, for example:
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/06/new-low-in-preference-for-the-death-penalty/
1
Jesus said, "This command I give you. Love one another as I have loved you."
3
Didn't Jefferson say something about preferring to see a thousand guilty men go free rather than one innocent man hanged?
17
@Theodore R
Jefferson could be full of himself as well as other things.
1
@Theodore R
We let hundreds of thousands of bad folks go free and they, in turn, harm hundreds of thousands of innocents, by rape, murders and other assaults.
We might have proof of innocents executed in 1915, two brothers from South Carolina.
-- 94% percent of state prisoners in 1991 had committed a violent crime or been incarcerated or on probation before. Of these prisoners, 45 percent had committed their latest crimes while free on probation or parole. When "supervised" on the streets, they inflicted at least 218,000 violent crimes, including 13,200 murders and 11,600 rapes (more than half of the rapes against children) (6).
Just those prisoners in 1991.
-- Patrick A. Langan, senior statistician at the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics,calculated that tripling the prison population from 1975 to 1989 may have reduced "violent crime by 10 to 15 percent below what it would have been," thereby preventing a "conservatively estimated 390,000 murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults in 1989 alone." (6).
In 1989, alone.
1
The death penalty standard needs to be higher. Instead of "beyond a reasonable doubt" the standard should be "guilty with zero chance of innocence"
In that scenario, the DP should still be available. The monsters of the Cheshire Connecticut house invasion/murders/torture/rape need to die, period. There is ZERO percent chance they are innocent.
9
Why is there no mention of either Equal Justice Initiative EJI.org or Bryan Stevenson’s Book, Just Mercy? Seems to me a glaring omission in this article.
2
The top of the comments section says:
"The Times needs your voice."
And to that I add:
"America needs Nicholas Kristof's voice."
I think that about says it.
11
Fact checking/vetting are very important.
Based upon your recommendation of the "Trial By Fire" movie, it is a certainty that you know, almost, nothing about the case.
I sent you the details, to fact check.
In 2005, New York Times reporter Adam Liptak found the death row innocence claims to be 71% false.
Liptak: "To be sure, 30 or 40 categorically innocent people have been released from death row," (NY Times, 1/23/05), At the time of Liptak's article, there were 119 listed on the Innocence List (fn 13) 35 innocent, as per average by Liptak, means a 71% error rate with the 119. From 'The Death of Innocents': A Reasonable Doubt, by Adam Liptak, NY Times, JAN. 23, 2005
In 2011, the Florida Commission on Capital Cases found that the alleged 23 "innocents" released from Florida's death row to be 83% in error.
There are many more that I will send you.
These innocent deceptions have been well known, for about 31 years.
1
I do not support the death penality, period. Mr. Kristof's article is correct and well-written. There is one statement that he makes in this piece that needs correction, regarding the death penalty for witchcraft in Salem, Mass, in 1692.
The 19 indivduals and the 1 person pressed to death were not executed for practicing witchcraft. They were executed because they refused to confess to practicing witchcraft. Over 100 indivduals were accused of witchcraft and imprisoned in Salem Gaol in 1692. Many of them "confessed" and were released. It's late and I don't have all my numbers in front of me, so bear with me. Although these persons often had to forfeit property and endure other restrictions in the community, they weren't executed and no one was burned at the stake in Salem.
The fact that 19 indivduals refused to confess to a crime they did not commit, thus putting their lives at risk tells us a lot about the legacy of the death penalty. This vital fact is frequently overlooked by people who cite the Salem witch trials and it is a weird twist in the imagination- if you refuse to confess to a crime that the state says you commited, we'll hang you. Say what? But if you lie and confess your life will be spared. I urge you to delve a little deeper into the subject, if you visit the academic sources you will find the facts. The truth is out there, and it's pretty damn strange.
5
@LeslieRM
Actually, he was, wildly, inaccurate on the "innocents" claims as well as the Trial by Fire" case and on deterrence, as simple fact checking/vetting show, as I demonstrated, in another comment.
1
@LeslieRM
You left out some important points:
The Salem Witch Trials
The Salem Witch trials were held a few months in 1692.
They began as a product of European witch hysteria, which lasted for hundreds of years and resulted in tens of thousands of executions in Europe.
Unlike in Europe, the Salem mass hysteria lasted a few months, was quickly followed by overwhelming condemnation, admission of error, eventual pardons, release of all claims against any charged and financial compensation for this massive error.
The hysteria in Salem really got out of hand when one of the three original suspects confessed to all the charges and gave dramatic descriptions of events.
19 were, very quickly executed.
Before, during and after the executions, these trials were challenged and condemned.
More here:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-175162489/?no-ist
2
Just consider what happened to Our Lord Jesus Christ in His trial before Pilate. This could happen today here at home, by a jury provoked by prosecutors, judges and legislators claiming “toughness on crime....”
6
@The Scandinavian
Very unlikely the Son of God will volunteer to be executed for a crime He did not commit, on purpose, so as to be the Perfect Sacrifice for the sins of man, again.
But, you never know, I guess.
Possibly, we have proof of innocents executed, as recently as 1915, two brothers from South Carolina.
Since 1973, we have allowed about 21,000 additional innocents to be murdered by those KNOWN murderers that we have allowed to murder, again - recidivist murderers.
Where are innocents at risk?
1
I have no problem with the *principle* of the death penalty. There are terrible people in the world who deserve death for what they've done, and the idea that killing someone makes us 'no better than them' is specious: a police officer exceeding the speed limit to pursue a speeding drunk driver is not 'just as bad.' Two events can be physically almost identical but morally light years apart.
Sadly, it is the *practice* of the death penalty that is so deeply flawed that it can't ethically be used. Capital punishment is too often recklessly abused by the inept and the resentful.
3
@Voltron
Some reality.
Possibly, we have actual proof of 0.4% of those sent to death row being actually innocent, since 1976 and they have all been released.
Likely, there is not a more accurate system.
We execute about 0.2% of our murderers after an average of 16 years of appeals.
Reckless, resentful? I think not.
2
An excellent and thought-provoking article, BUT what in the instances of serial killers and child predators who murder their victims? There is absolutely no evidence that either of these types of criminals can be rehabilitated.
3
@goodwordgirl
So no possibility of parole. Our failure to understand why they cannot be changed does not justify killing them.
3
Here we have another of those puzzles coming just months after we discover that a police officer with a long career was behind many bad rapes and murders all over California.
There are some cases that cry out for the death penalty. Others like the one in the article just say "hold on here!" Perhaps they should be handed out like Nobel prizes, few and far between but deserved.
No one should get a death sentence based on a coerced confession after hours of lies and foolishness on the part of the authorities.
The Golden State Killer, most definitely should. The Green River killer ditto. Same for the Manson gang. They were relatively lucky unless life behind bars really is worse. I suppose one could spend the time reading one's way through one of those Five Feet of Books series. Maybe for the murderers that would be punishment enough.
Ted Bundy got what he deserved, and he also got a faint idea of what it meant to know someone was going to kill him and he couldn’t do a thing about it.
As the current saying goes,"How many people do you have to kill to be executed?" Don't know the answer, but when there are more than a dozen the possibility should exist.
1
It is hoped here that someday the compassion and intelligence so lacking in Donald Trump's know it all response in the Central Park case will be the only thing between him and the kind of reflexive retribution he so mindlessly espoused. As Twain once said "It's not the things you don't know that get you in trouble. It's the things you do know that ain't so. "
4
I still think that murder for hire might be the one crime that justifies the death penalty.
Killing someone, even a killer, accomplishes nothing. It demeans law. It prevents redemption. It creates a false sense of being able to right the original wrong.
We indulge the worst of our judgmentalism when we use the state to murder, and we do it with pre-meditation.
6
I am against the death penalty, but there is no redemption for psychopathic serial killers.
1
Turn the Public Defender's office into the paymaster for defendants to hire PRIVATE attorneys. Who can be sued for malpractice. Part of a fir system is a fair fight in court with effectively similar $$$ invested. A matte of justice.
1
A claim of legal malpractice against a lazy or incompetent criminal defense attorney can only result in a civil money judgment against that attorney and CANNOT result in a change in the criminal conviction of the innocent person. Such a money judgement would be small comfort to the wrongfully incarcerated (or executed) person or his or her family.
If someone killed or even hurt someone I love, I would want to hurt or kill that person. That is normal. That is human.
But what is not moral is to hurt or kill someone who is under your control and power. It's simply immoral. I would want to do it--I know that. I count on society and the law to stop me from doing it.
You may not hurt someone under your power. It's immoral. Period.
3
What happened to the legal maximum that it is better to let 100 guilty men go free then to convict one innocent man?
It is a fact that over the course of decades there have been innocent people executed, and after they were dead evidence surfaced that indicated they were in fact innocent.
That alone should be enough to permanently abolish the death penalty.
If people are unjustly convicted and later they have their convictions reversed, at least they’re still alive to regain their freedom.
I agree that there are people who are savages and must be separated from society. Putting them in prison for the rest of their miserable lives is a fair punishment. Killing them is not.
2
Every time I read the pros and cons of the death penalty, the same scenario plays in my mind. My female neighbor. a lifelong friend, calls me and screams, "My husband is going to kill me!" I grab my Glock, run across the street and into her house, where I find the husband plunging a knife into his wife's body again and again. I fire ten shots and the husband dies instantly. Is that the death penalty? Was I justified in executing the husband? Had I arrived one minute later and found the husband, bloody knife in hand, standing over his dead wife, would I still be justified in pumping ten shots into him?
2
killing another person should be punished by death!
corollary, any person involved in sentencing an innocent person to death would be subject to the death penalty themselves.
2
Convenient to have an absolute supernatural authority tell you how life should be lived or exterminated.
For those of us who do not believe in such a possibility there are only human factors to consider. Brutal childhoods, poor education, limited economic opportunity, dysfunctional families cripple individuals and create abborhent behaviors. This is not to say it is the cause of all murders.
These violent behaviors should be punished but not by an angry god. We should apply the principle of measured justice. Remove them forever from society. Then those who have been unjustly convicted have some hope of resurrection.
2
Thou Shalt Not Kill. Can you imagine what society would be like if we just followed what many of us learned in first grade? No death penalty, no wars, no guns whose only purpose is to kill and maim. I want to live in that world.
6
Why aggrandize the crime and the criminal by killing the the person who commits it?
When we execute someone, we sink ourselves to the lowest level a human can go. That's the real moral reason not to execute anyone. Ever.
3
Jesus quoting Isaiah in Matthew 9:13: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
2
In the state of Michigan, where I live, the death penalty has been outlawed (and, since 1963, unconstitutional). Thank goodness.
1
Every time I see the bumper sticker that says “Abortion stops a heartbeat” I think, ‘So does an execution.’ Yet I don’t see the pro-lifers screaming about this issue. Why not, I wonder?
2
@DC
The two are unrelated. Would it be accetable to ask if your for abortion how could be agaist the dealt penality.
1
What the column only touches on, but does not discuss in any meaningful way, is prosecutorial misconduct.
IMO, prosecutors who through laziness, incompetence or out of interest of securing a death penalty conviction for personal gain (like keeping their jobs) cause the death of an innocent person should themselves be tried and sentenced for murder or manslaughter, depending on the circumstances.
For instance, deliberately withholding exculpatory evidence or not presenting that evidence at trial as such by the prosecution, resulting in the death of the consequently wrongly convicted should constitute at a minimum a second degree murder, quite possibly first degree murder, depending on the circumstances.
Hold the prosecutors accountable and the problem will go away.
2
@Kara Ben Nemsi There is empirical evidence to support the role of prosecutorial misconduct in capital cases. See: https://www.aclu.org/issues/capital-punishment/prosecutorial-misconduct-and-capital-punishment
Although I oppose the death penalty for some of the reasons you cite, I have a quibble as to one argument you make. I do not think there would ever be a time when I would look back on the death penalties imposed on Nazi war criminals as primitive, unwarranted retribution. Sometimes, the death penalty just seems right.
5
death penalties are favoured by the corrupt, racist, ignorant and prejudiced who like to simply 'dispose of' people they don't like
so their mistakes can't come back and accuse them - as least not as living people anymore
2
The state does not have the right to kill people, except in self defense. The same as its citizens. The death penalty is barbaric. In this country, it is also horribly racist and classist. How many rich white folks have you ever seen on death row.
1
How many rich white folks commit 1st degree murder?
3
Have you never watched a Law and Order?
Strong was correct: the death penalty reflects the values of the community. What he failed to mention is that the community’s values stink.
This column makes me wish the New York Times had an upvote-downvote option for columns like this one. I give this as big an up-vote as I can. Wonderful, well thought out column. Ample facts that justify the conclusions.
1
Execution under the death penalty is a barbaric practice that no government should be allowed to commit. It is nothing less than state sanctioned murder in blood lust. The threat of the death penalty does not deter people from murder; we have a few thousand years of recorded human history to prove that.
I don't believe the death penalty is even justified in the case of people who are guilty of the most heinous acts of violence. Every minute a person who committed a savage crime remains alive is one minute more that person can come to face with the evil ad horror of their crime. Execution serves only to gratify the emotion of revenge in the eyes of those who judge and condemn.
As evidence of that look no further than the photos of the mobs who attended public hangings. I doubt for many "justice" was on their mind as much as it was to witness the spectacle, like the crowds in a Roman stadium egging on gladiators to rip brutally each each apart.
I wouldn't even have executed the 9/11 hijackers had they (in theory, of course) survived crashing planes into the WTC or Nazi war criminals guilty of the greatest atrocities. A more just condemnation for them would have been to suffer a lifetime misery of harsh confinement in order to have all the time in the world to contemplate the enormity of their acts. There is no opportunity for self-awareness when dead.
1
Can a new wrong expiate old wrongs?
Buddhist text
The question has always been how many executions of innocent people are we willing to accept, in order to make sure we execute the guilty.
1
Why is it so hard for some people to understand that there are extremely sick and dangerous people in our society that have abrogated their right to live among us - even in a jail cell.
Serial killers, mass shooters, child abductors/killers, white supremacists/skin heads, serial bombers and mass murderers. People who kill for pleasure. People who kill out pure hatred. People who kill because of gender, skin color, or religion. Psychopaths, sociopaths, sadists and worse.
These are the killers for which there is zero doubt regarding their guilt. People who are one hundred percent guilty of crimes against humanity that are so horrible, so unimaginably disturbing, and who are utterly remorseless.
Why should they have a chance to sit in a jail cell and relish the memories, in detail, of each and every kill?
When a poll of every law enforcement agent in the country is taken, and the majority of police, troopers, CIA, and FBI career professionals disagree with me, maybe then I will side with the complete abolishment of the death penalty.
3
"Republican and Democratic politicians alike — including the state’s former attorney general Kamala Harris, now running for president — refused for years to allow advanced DNA testing in Cooper’s case, even though his lawyers would have paid for it. (Harris has apologized and says she now favors testing.)"
Although it's good to see someone apologizing for gross misconduct, this to too little and too late. Sorry, Ms. Harris, but you won't have my vote.
1
Mr Kristof could have pointed out that most, if not all, other democratic countries have abolished the death penalty, and yet they all have lower crime rates than we do. Capital punishment is a relic of a more savage time, when our crude understanding of human motivation dictated that only death could deter the "criminal classes." I remember sitting in a Texas jury pool in the early 1970s for a case involving an armed robbery, and being shocked at the fact that the prosecutor was seeking the death penalty. Such draconian punishments brutalize the society they are supposed to protect.
As for the families of murder victims, executing a criminal to satisfy them returns us to the "eye for an eye" concept of justice. Revenge will not assuage their grief and may make them feel complicit in a cycle of violence.
4
Just Mercy by Bryan Stephenson, one of our country’s best lawyers, is an eloquent and compelling view of our criminal justice system. I think it should be required reading. Race, income, and sheer luck all impact the issue of whether justice is done. It is undeniable that innocent people are on death row, as shown by the work of the Innocence Project which has a commendable record of getting convictions overturned based on DNA testing. The thought that even one innocent person is executed should make us all queasy enough to seek criminal justice reform.
2
@J. See also Austin Sarat's Gruesome Spectacles
https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23979
The Bible does not belong in this argument unless you think the Constitution is wrong about the separation of church and state.
Our current so called justice system is guilty of crimes against humanity by definition but we are so filled with hate we are blinded to our shortcomings.
5
Nick, we'll be debating the pros and cons for years to come and I suspect there will always be death penalty supporters. It is one thing to look at the crimes against someone outside of your family. Personal loss is a whole different thing. Frequently, I would posit, life in prison isn't sufficient.
I have never lost a family member or even a close friend to murder so how can I really tell how I would feel. I doubt I can, and hope I never confront it.
3
This column gives varied perspectives, but I can add one it lacks. I followed a capital case from the murder of a lifelong friend to an execution. That crime devastated the victim's family and a large group of friends she nurtured in 23 years.
We hear that executions give victims' loved ones closure. I'm just one person in this position, but found this idea seductive yet illusory. The fury that rises up within as you at the murder of a loved one is powerful. It can easily turn into rage, but that can feel better than the despair of imagining your loved one's last moments, what she suffered, and the decades she lost.
An execution may have been a moral response to that murder; I can't say. The murder created the worst set of emotional problems I've ever known. At first, an execution seemed like a solution, and I imagined vigilante justice, repaying the killer personally for all of the suffering he'd caused. But I soon realized that following this path didn't help me or anyone else. The state would deal with the killer, but that wouldn't help me.
Fortunately, amid fury and grief, I held on to memories of what my friend brought to my life and the lives of many others. I always tried to follow the her parents' advice: to see the world again with her lively perception, her humor, and her forbearance. That is how we learn to bear this kind of loss.
To anyone in this position: Do you think an execution can assuage your grief and anguish? All I can say is, "Don't kid yourself."
12
@NIcky V
The Islamic system of justice has a different way of dealing with this situation. Murder is punishable by death. But the close relatives of the victim have the absolute right to pardon the murderer and allow him/her to be set free, if they choose to. No one else, not even the leader of the country, has the right to pardon a murderer.
1
On the other hand how many guilty people are set free by the parole board to reoffend?
What you have, in too many instances, is a system which kills innocent people and releases the guilty.
Not to mention the heinous white collar crimes, which can result in death.
The death penalty is but one graphic example of the failure of the justice system.
Amazingly Mr Kristof and I agree on an issue he is writing about.My mind was changed about capital punishment when during a robbery attempt in London
England two young men Craig and Bentley were arrested at the burglary site.Bentley the first to be arrested was in police custody when Craig who was armed shot and killed a police
officer.Craig who was17 and too young to be hanged was sentenced to life in prison.Bentley who was 19 was hanged despite being in police custody at the time of the
murder.The theory being that if an unarmed policeman is killed then someone will pay.The prosecution claimed that Bentley yelled to Craig let him have it Chris,meaning shoot the policeman the defense claimed Bentley meant surrender the firearm to the officer.Essentially in my opinion Bentley was hung to set an example not for murdering anyone.
This flagrant example of societal revenge is what put the British anti death penalty movement into high gear and a few years later capital punishment was eliminated in Britain.
The death penalty as far as anyone can demonstrate has never been a deterrent and is probably not today.Most murders are committed today in an act of rage against someone the murderer knows,finally the old saying justice delayed is justice denied certainly applies to the death penalty when many convicted murderers are executed decades after their
crime when they are completely different from the much younger self who committed the murder.
Just how civilized have we become that we could get rid of it? I understand sometimes the victims family say be merciful but what about who want justice if it happened to them? How many states put it too a vote or did the executive make a decision everyone doesn't want to live with?
Innocent people go to jail all the time. I lived in NYC when Giuliani was Mayor and I almost did a few times by cops who thought I fit a profile. Governments are corrupt and always looking for a patsy. But a lot of guilty people go to jail. A story, about Texans on death row, I believe I read here left me no doubt the people in the piece deserved to be killed. I couldn't care about them at all. They were that viscous and there was no doubt about their guilt.
The old joke of a murderer about to get sentenced to death for killing his parents pleads for some mercy because he's an orphan now and deserves sympathy is worth mentioning no matter how old it is.
1
Most civilized countries, like Canada, have no capital punishment. The United States does. It's hardly civilized, but we have known that for a long time.
5
The judicial death penalty is as fraught and corrupted as Nicholas Kristof describes; not least because of confused witnesses and police incompetence.
The death penalty is most unlikely to deter serious criminals since to a 'man' they expect to get away with their acts.
The problem here is that a lot of the agonised moralising carries over to the "point of sale" death penalty; where an officer or citizen kills a criminal during the commission of his crime. This is a different issue entirely since the uncertainties of the legal system are almost entirely removed.
The only biblical quote appropriate here is: "judge not lest you be yourself judged".
In England in 1352, hanging, drawing, disemboweling, and quartering become statutory law as punishment for high treason. It was abolished in 1870. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanged,_drawn_and_quartered. Against this background it is understandable that our enlightened founding fathers wanted more humane punishments and wrote the eight amendment which includes a clause of prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. In Russia, an ultraconservative tsar, Nicholas I, abolished the death penalty in 1825, replacing it with exile in Siberia. Sadly, the USA is still included in the league of roque nations, which currently not only have death penalty on their books but continue to carry them out. Capital punishment today, amounts to what our founding fathers considered cruel and unusual punishment of their era, simply unconstitutional. You don’t have to be an “originalist” Supreme Court Justice to understand that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment
thank sky fairy the usa is the only western democracy that could run a story like this about their legal system and capital punishment.
for a country that preaches its greatness--screeches it actually--the usa certainly seems the opposite of greatness in many ways.
sort of the anti shining city on a hill.
2
Heartbroken. The system failed all Americans. The victim and the accused are tormented, while the killers walk free. They don’t see us!
Same with war, same with abortion, I believe death penalty can't be a permanent solution because moral ends can't be achieved via immoral means such as killing. To be clear, I'm pro-choice only because abortion going underground will cause worse result both for women as well as babies. Similarly, I'm pro-capital punishment only because some murderers are so vile and remorseless that victims' loved ones can't cope with the loss without it.
1
In general I oppose the death penalty for all the stated reasons, with a few stringent exceptions. Those invariably involve cases in which there remains a danger to the safety of the people, even when the condemned were incarcerated without parole. This includes terrorist leaders and organized crime bosses (e.g. drug king pins) where a potential danger for hostage taking to force their release exists.
In those cases, the public safety factor in my view overrides the other concerns. Effectively, that's what Obama did when he opted not to bring Osama bin Laden back alive, which would have been easily possible. He made a good decision there and we should keep that option open. The burden of proof would be so steep and the requirements so specific that wrongful convictions truly can be eliminated.
Although I'm sure Trump thinks Osama bin Laden was a very nice guy and would have been a great mediator in his talks with Kim Jong Un. If only because Obama didn't like him...
Reform yes, total elimination of the death penalty absolutely not.
Here's a reasonable compromise. In a case with undisputable, undeniable proof, "without a doubt," of 1st degree, premeditated murder then give the death penalty. What if the shooter in Las Vegas had been caught alive after murdering 58 people. It's not in any way immoral after a trial shows his without a doubt guilt to put him to death.
Don't impose your religious beliefs on the rest of us by saying we can't play God, you can't prove God or anything like a God even exists. What we can prove is that someone committed a heinous premeditated murder and since they made that choice then they know what awaits them, not some ethereal made up God to supposedly pass eternal judgement.
The second reason we need the death penalty is as an incentive to those killers who know where the body is.
Don't try to tell people who are want to bury their loved one, that the they need to abide by your moral highground and let the killer live in prison. Maybe the killer will never reveal it, but often when faced with the death penalty it finally becomes worth it to them to reveal where the body is.
2
@A P
The death "penalty" is not really a penalty. Basically, the condemned go in for a minor procedure under general anaesthesia and then experience fatal medical malpractice while unconscious.
That makes no sense to me. How is that supposed to be a deterrent?
Moreover, there is no more suffering by the condemned after the procedure. No more suffering, no more punishment.
On the other hand, as a member of a jury who sent an innocent person to die, I would suffer unbearably for the rest of my life.
No, the far better approach is incarceration. If I sent an innocent person to the slammer I would still suffer, but at least by the time I realize that, that person could still be released and whatever imperfect amends could be made.
As for killers, spending the rest of their lives in isolation and social deprivation would be far more punishing than getting an anaesthesia and being relieved of their punishment. If the next of kin of the victim so desperately need their satisfaction, they could be provided with a 24h video feed from the killer's cell. My gut feeling is that after a while their thirst for revenge would be quenched.
I oppose the death penalty - not because I think folks who have indisputably committed atrocities deserve to live out their natural lives - but because I think state-sanctioned executions give way too much power to government.
I wouldn't, however, object to leaving certain convicted criminals alone in an unmonitored room with the family and loved-ones of their victim(s) .....
1
A very good case against the death penalty because of the incompetence and racism of the justice system.
I heard also that the death penalty is more likely to be applied when the victim is white.
The Emperor Marcus Aurelius reportedly said to a horse thief about to be hanged that he was not being executed for stealing a horse but rather to deter others.
The death sentence needs a terminology change to Capital Deterrence, and only used sparingly, for the likes of the BTK killer, say, and as a public spectacle to get the message across, with a carnival atmosphere for public enjoyment, like before.
“No-one ever went bust underestimating the taste of the American public.”
1
Lets be clear. The Death Penalty is but one additional facet of the war on people of color that is waged world wide by the white man.
Income inequality is easily as insidious world-wide and as horrifically responsible for what amounts to only a slightly hidden genocide of people of color along with a sweeping of the the poor on up to the middle class in 2019.
The world is horribly broken. We must never give up the fight for justice. Thanks to the New York Times and to Nicholas Kristof for this article. More are necessary in an unrelenting manner until Trump, truly exemplifying the white man's burden, is thrust back into the hole from whence he came along with the racists that defend Trump's worst impulses and contributed to electing him into office.
I would reserve the death penalty for people already in prison. So unless you support solitary confinement you have to have a penalty for a prisoner that kills another prisoner or a prison guard.
"Everything you think you know about the death penalty is wrong." Incorrect. Those of us who oppose the death penalty knew all of this already. But you got me to read the article so... well played.
I've always been against the death penalty. Two wrongs don't make a right. The most frightening thing about this artist clue is the current president of the US, the most immoral human on the planet, calling for swift executions.
The deterrence argument is a total joke. The very last thing either an enraged killer or a coldhearted psychopath is likely to be thinking about when they kill is what will happen to them if they get caught.
I have never understood how our unalienable right to life is allowed to be taken away. The state is not god or nature; we have a social contract, in which the decision of whether we live or not is not up for trial.
One issue people need to take notice of is how DNA evidence is not being applied equally, not only in the legal system but more so by advocates such as Nick Kristof.
In many cases the general public is told by such advocates like Kristof that DNA evidence was not used to possibly exonerate a suspect of a crime, but at other times advocates claim that the use of DNA evidence by law enforcement agencies that convicts a suspect is unreliable for a slew of reasons and should not be used.
Granted every criminal case involving the use of DNA as evidence have unique sets of circumstances, however if advocates are skeptical of the use of DNA by law enforcement agencies then why argue that DNA evidence can be conclusive to exonerate a person?
Their argument often suggests that the collection methods by law enforcement can be tainted deliberately or unintentionally, but rarely if ever acknowledge the same can be true to exonerate a person.
Progressive thinkers like Kristof may have good intentions, but too often their logic is tainted by their own illogical methods of applying their logic unequally to both sides of a situation.
1
Sure punishing those who murdered or did wrong with a death penalty might make the fire fights fire saying hold its meaning but as this is a genuine problem with the current system of laws the meaning fades and often becomes based on belief or opinion. Killing doesn't bring the dead back and revenge is never sweet yet emotions cause the problem to persist. A better , thorough search through documents on a miscreants (or falsely accused) wrongdoings should be established without error before the death penalty should even be brought to mind. No ''innocent'' should have to even be faced with the fear of dying for not committing anything wrong. As it currently stands most people accused of murder do in fact commit the murder or assist in the act.
The death penalty makes sense as it removes the money required to house and feed inmates and gives the victims family their taste but killing is still killing no matter how merciful or grotesque the death is. Shouldn't imprisoning for life be enough of a punishment or even old torture techniques such as branding could resurface. Life should be valued no matter how harsh the crime. A much better solution in my opinion is the old ways of dungeons and a suffering lifestyle. Whipping, branding, tarring, dismemberment, chained to a wall, etc. Life is important to preserve and enough torture "can" change a person and help make the victim's family/friends cope with their loss.
1
Capital punishment is the lesser, in my scheme of things, of two evils. The greater evil and burden to bear is life in prison w/out parole. A quick death by firing squad must surely be more humane. Both ends are horrific, however, and one wishes that one didn't have to confront the harsh reality.
2
I fail to see the moral superiority of life without parole over capital punishment for someone who is truly guilty of a heinous crime. Both result in the same ending. We may absolutely need a stricter burden of proof for both sentences than what we have today, but why is the additional burden of proof for only one of them if the outcome is expected to be the same? The rationale for cost is due to appeals; where there is absolute certainty, appeals should be quickly processed and cost cheaper. Appeals made solely to avoid the death penalty would therefore be immoral as they would cost society funds that could be better allocated on prevention or other public initiatives. The death penalty should be used only in cases of extreme clarity, and not for prevention or retribution, but to eliminate a harmful individual permanently and avoid further harming society by redirecting time, effort, and resources.
4
The sad thing is that people who favor the death penalty will go on favoring it even when shown cases where the executed person was probably or plainly innocent. Most people actually take for granted that some convicted people are innocent, regard less of the penalty level. They consider this a tolerable cost in terms of the public safety issues and the alleged deterrence factor in controlling crime. They do not base these feelings on any meaningful data, partly because for the most part such data does not exist. Instead, they go with their gut feeling that over all the system is working if most of the people convicted are actually guilty, and the few who are not are a necessary sacrifice to the greater good.
We do not have a perfect criminal Justice system, and in that sense such people are correct in their view that at all levels there are some innocent people being punished. The question then for a criminal Justice system and for society in general is whether or not that is actually an acceptable situation.The touchstone is capital punishment. If we can't get that right, then plainly the state is guilty of murder. But that is not the way many people look at it. Until they do, perhaps through litigation, we will continue to have general support for a barbaric practice that has generally been rejected worldwide.
3
Capital punishment is vengeance and no more. A criminal is not deterred, neither is a person driven to the madness of murder by revenge, nor the serial killers who have no rationale of any sort to explain their actions.
Children who are abused and broken by the adults about them cannot be expected to grow into productive trouble free adults. The death penalty not only kills those who commit the crime but also a part of those who see to its' administration.
Murder of any sort and however justified is numbing to the whole of any society which engages in its' practice and is never beneficial.
6
After reading the opinion of Mr. Kristof, I wanted to argue in a precise and articulated way about the death penalty to demonstrate its uselessness and social perniciousness, avoiding any discussion about its immorality. But I did not know how to instill doubt in those of you who are in favour of the death penalty without giving any hold to those who put it into politics. Then I remembered that I write from Padua, which for centuries was a city of the Serenissima Republic of Venice (697 - 1797). Someone will wonder what this has to do with the subject under discussion here. It has to do with the fact that (I quote) "the Republic of Venice - which was by no means a small and insignificant state of the Italian peninsula - was the first European country to effectively abolish first torture and then the death penalty, even before the Enlightenment ideas began to circulate (early eighteenth century)”. Therefore, I invite those who think that the death penalty is a valid deterrent against crime to ask themselves for a moment why three centuries ago, when the United States did not yet exist and Louis XIV of Bourbon, known as 'Le Roi Soleil', reigned in France, a thousand-year-old state made that decision. Only this, to ask questions. Best regards from Padua (EU).
4
The “innocent may be executed” claim is a false argument against the death penalty. There are many murders where the identity of the killer is not in doubt, for example shooters caught on video and apprehended at the crime scene with multiple witnesses.
A higher standard than beyond a reasonable doubt could be implemented, such as “beyond any doubt”.
3
Why not just eliminate the death penalty? Why work so hard to preserve an anachronism?
1
I wonder, if people were forced as citizens to serve as witnesses to executions in the same manner as they are expected to serve on juries, if the death penalty would soon be abolished.
1
As long as the death penalty is on the books, there is a non-trivial probability it will be used against someone wrongfully convicted. For that reason it should be abolished. But only for that reason.
I suspect my opinion is rare among my fellow liberals. I also suspect that is why so many otherwise rational people loathe us.
2
It has been abolished in almost every country around the world. Many Americans are a bloodthirsty people. They even loathe their fellow Americans who aren't bloodthirsty.
1
I have been pro-death penalty for all of my adult life (I’m 52) and held firmly to this conviction despite the rest of my family always being opposed to it. But this article has finally gotten me to ‘see the light’. Thank you sincerely for changing my mind! If only every innocent man/woman executed could be brought back so that society could humbly ask them for forgiveness.
8
What disturbs me about the death penalty is the fact that innocent people have been executed. The justice system is stacked against defendants, especially poor defendants. That's because lawmen are promoted based on cases closed, while prosecutors are rewarded for convictions "won." Many judges were prosecutors before being appointed or elected. And in jurisdictions where judges are chosen by the voters, only those who are "tough on crime" make it to the bench.
There is only one way to be certain that no innocent person is ever executed: Abolish the death penalty.
4
For a European who lived in the States it is shocking that in this day and age the debate here still goes on - you feel that in this sense the US is a medieval country. As you feel in general with the harsh treatment of criminals, with the system of privately run overcrowded jails, and with the fact that the US has one of the worst records in the world regarding a percentage of incarcerated population.
Not to speak of the frightening fact that most victims of this state perpetuated crime are Afro-Americans, not to speak of the fact how often an Afro-American is mistreated already by the police before the trial, even killed. Fortunately most of my minimally educated American friends are bewildered by these facts and have been wondering, as we foreigners do: what in the world are people who defend this senseless violence thinking? Well, reading the comments below helps tremendously to understand this tragedy: the defenders are often either racists or bigots, and almost always unfeeling violent individuals not moved even by beautiful articles such as this one. Not moved by the tragedies of so many innocent victims executed and/or imprisoned. Not moved by the tragedy of Mr. Williams? Should the defenders of such a crime be punishable by law? Executed when they support executions of innocent people? What should be the punishment of Mr. Trump who publicly asked for a murder of innocent people - and continues to do so?
8
It is possible that the ads placed by Donald Trump calling for the death penalty for the black teenagers who were arrested and charged with the assault of a white woman influenced some of the jurors who found the boys guilty. Therefore I propose that he be found guilty and sentenced to serve his term in prison on Riker’s Island.
Capital punishment isn't nice but neither are those it's meant for or the crimes they commit. It also can be made less expensive than imprisonment, and fair by insurances made against innocent deaths. I think families of victims should have the last word on punishment and the justice for the victims, as well as the safety of society, remain the focus of our justice system. As for society, we can have sympathy for the devil or the victims, and I really question why people think choosing the devil is the kind and righteous choice.
4
Life without parole in a cell for 23 hours a day is no picnic. I question if it is sympathy for the devil, as you say, to choose that over death.
3
We have a legal system, not a justice system, where it's all about winning, and the outcomes are highly influenced by one's social economic status. Every defendant should be entitled to a defense equal in quality as every other defendant, not based on one's wealth. Prosecutorial misconduct should also be held as a serious crime.
5
The death penalty has been in existence since the discovery of America. Prior to that it was utilized in most cultures throughout the world. Public executions routinely occur in the Middle East. Now all of a sudden in the last 20+ years certain Americans disagree with it and it must end?? This along with sudden cultural changes in the USA are, in my mind, devastating. Soon we may be a "socialist" country. This is not good and hopefully people will realize what is happening and make some serious changes.
1
Most of the industrialized world has given up the death penalty. As long as we have the death penalty we are no better than Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, three of the few countries that use this medieval system.
Mr. Kristof,
I mostly share your views, Capitol Punishment is not really much of a deterrent, it cost more to execute than jail for life, what about mistakes.............but
If we remove or mostly remove Capitol Punishment from the table can we make "life without the possibility of parole" mean what the words say? That means that someone convicted of a heinous murder and sentenced to life may not even apply for parole without substantial evidence of wrongful conviction. That means that Morrow, even as a changed man still spends the rest of his life in prison, maybe helping others achieve betterment but in prison. That may not be the best plausible outcome for this particular man who real has transformed, but it does provide a layer of protection against a con job by someone whose rehabilitation is less deep, gets paroled and in a world he or she is ill prepared to deal with, gets stressed and re offends.
Is that a deal?
3
The death penalty is revenge. It isn't justice and it doesn't deter anything. It's state sanctioned murder.
5
If indeed innocents are being punished, it is a much graver issue and a larger issue! Even if they don't get capital punishment they are being meted out injustice! How is that ok?
Whether capital punishment leads to deterence is as debatable as whether any punishment leads to deterence. No one has so far to my knowledge used the (lack of deterrence) as a logic to abolish punishment. ( Except capital)
There exist moral arguments in favor of abolishing capital punishment. But the ones presented in this article largely point to serious issues in criminal justice system in itself and not particularly about the capital punishment
3
Wonderful article, leaving me speechless and grateful for writers like Mr. Kristof!
4
Several years ago while researching the Death Penalty for school, my son and I discovered that the Death Penalty States had higher Murder rates than those without. Few people, including my colleagues believed it. As a Death Penalty attorney, I applaud Gov. Newsome, and hope that he makes the moratorium permanent. The sooner the better.
4
Thank you, Mr. Kristof. Thank you for this thorough and thoughtful dissection of the Death Penalty and its application.
3
That’s enough to disqualify Harris for me. Another prosecutor that doesn’t care to seek the truth, just further her career, life is nothing like “Law and Order”. This problem is rampant, I have personally experienced prosecutorial misconduct by a low level prosecutor. Fortunately I had a ex prosecutor lawyer that cost tens of thousands that got a higher level person in the prosecutor’s office to recognize that my accuser was a liar. I still got 4 months in county and 5 years probation so they could save face. The false witness, she got away with it.
A public defender didn’t visit me until I was locked up for 2 months and didn’t know I had a private attorney.
It’s a disgrace that the public defender’s office is not budgeted as much as the prosecutor. That is not justice and is why so many poor people accept pleas although they are innocent. Justice is only for people that can afford it.
5
I take all the points Nick Kristof is making. The one exception I would make is in the case of terrorists PROVIDING we are absolutely sure the person is guilty. We know who did the Boston Marathon bombings and we have him in prison. There is no doubt whatsoever and that is a crime deserving of the death penalty. Anything else and Mr. Kristof is correct - there's no way to bring back a life.
That the death penalty disproportionately impacts the poor, minorities, and those that lack the means to be well represented is a symptom of our current distorted values. It is ironic to me that politicians that make decisions based on flimsy evidence and perhaps personal gain to send our young men and women to fight and die in wars on foreign soil are seen as just and reasonable.
3
There are something’s worse than death - starting with life in Angola and Parchman Prisons in Louisiana and Mississippi. Having defended clients who were sentenced to both, I had clients tell me that death would have been a blessing.
If you wrongly take away a man’s liberty you can theoretically compensate him for his years behind bars with money. There is no compensation when you execute an innocent man.
3
I read the book Incognito, David Edelman’s coverage of the state of gains in neuroscience. Toward the end I was introduced to the debate among neuroscientists about whether or not we have free will. A brief explanation is here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/
The argument offers an impact on incarceration in general with some claims that neuroscience can make true rehabilitation for some possible and that others might require lifelong incarceration to protect society. Of course this requires individual understanding and knowledge of everyone, coincidentally the same vehicle to achieve peace.
2
It’s distasteful to do, but if I compare all the ways in which human beings slaughter each other, in war, in passion, in greed, in neglect, in hunger, in defense, in fear, etc, it’s the premeditated, politicized, bureaucratic machine of capital punishment that seems the most morally reprehensible.
2
The decreasing number of death penalty cases are key to continued existence. We are gradually working our way through the marginal cases where innocence is possible. The newest death penalty cases pass through various levels of scrutiny leaving only as the lowest of the dregs of society with lock solid evidence. You already see the difference where the number of cases involving guilt or innocence are quickly dropping and the shift is to cases about methods or whether a minister is present. Eventually we get to the point that we only have stone cold adult sane killers, usually up for multiple homicides, up for execution. The hardcore anti death penalty activists may hold vigils for these people, but no one else will. The anti-death penalty groups actually need to hurry up and get a Supreme Court ruling before we reach that stasis. If we get to that point, the death penalty continues forever, much like it is in Japan.
Statistically a life sentence cost less money than the cost of appeals by lawyers to overturn a death sentence. The taxpayers pay either way !
The Enchanted by Renee Denfeld. A beautifully written, somewhat magical, devastating novel about inmates living on death row.
HOW ABOUT TRUMP?
I'm a pacifist, opposed to war and the death penalty, but maybe there are exceptions, like the Nuremberg trials.
Here we have someone who without evidence advocated executing the Central Park Five, and more recently has supported executions of political dissidents and the assassination of a journalist by the Saudis, funded the Saudi's bombing of Yemeni civilians, stood by while a Russian supported Syrian dictator gassed and bombed his citizens, and advocated the execution for treason of US intelligence officers for investigating HIM and his campaign for collusion with the Russians as part of his campaign to subvert American democracy. And domestically, his campaign to strip Americans of their health insurance, and deny Puerto Ricans of disaster aid.
Yes, impeach, but maybe we need to put down a real marker for causing deaths by propaganda and policy.
5
@Bob Hagan
Trump's behavior is egregious but it reflects a person who is weak and insecure trying to act as he thinks people who are strong and confident act. I would rather just keep him away from the kind of responsibilities and authority given to a President, and let him figure out in Trump Tower that he needs a good shrink or continue to act out his problems in private.
@Bob Hagan No Casual. What is clear from Nick's article is that it's poor and black people that get executed. Confine Trump, or any other rich person in his gold tower? I'm a therapist, so that would be good, but you know, we need the death penalty as a deterrent. So those big time criminals think before THEY act....
Did you read or see the Grapes of Wrath? The poor farmer gets foreclosed by the bank asks, "Who do I shoot?" Nobody who causes death by domestic policy, eg the mortgage collapse that made thousands of families homeless, yesterday's polluted water case in Flint, pollution caused by removing environmental regulations, denial of insurance coverage for "pre-existing conditions" etc etc., ever gets prosecuted for wrongful death, let alone murder. What if we had laws to cover that? Death penalty? Certainly more people die, than by some penny-ante crook with a zip gun.
It's something of a libertarian thought experiment, but what if we applied "stand your ground" laws here? You were wrongly evicted, and a family member died as a result? You, or a family member, were denied coverage that caused a death? Shoot your banker, or your insurance agent? The mood of the country is eye for an eye settlements, so why shouldn't these be legitimate? Let's have some consequences for indirect murder. Justified homicide. Self defense.
The death penalty is a hard nut to crack. There are good reasons to think that it does not serve a useful purpose beyond offering retribution for heinous crimes. On the other hand, There are reasons to think that some criminals can only be deterred from harming others by the fear of death. What these amount to are intelligent guesses, hypotheses. Hypotheses can be supported or dismissed by good science.
So how would a sound scientific study of deterrence be done? It's not going to come from testing groups of murderers committing crimes under scientific protocols. It has to be from studying large samples of people who share circumstance suspected to motivate murder and violence that result in fatalities, and also of large numbers of people who don't share those circumstances, and then measure what happens. It's would take years and hundreds of thousands of people studied.
What we do now is consider a policy that we expect will work, logically, and just apply it. This method has led to people who are innocent or who seem to have become different persons executed or serving decades behind bars.
No one understands what "beyond a reasonable doubt" actually means. I also don't think people understand the power of a jury and what it means to serve on one.
1
I have been in favor for the death penalty for most of my life. I have changed. I cannot imagine what I would do if someone kill one of my sons. My parents lost two sons. They slowly died of grief. I can feel the pain. Cases like those presented to us by Mr. Kristof are some of the reasons for my change of heart.For the comment made that life in prison is still life; I used to think that way but reading and studying tells me otherwise. Life in prison in solitary confinement without parole is worse than “life”. Burring one person alive is still “life”, that could be the worst possible way of dying. Are there people who deserve such punishment? A deranged psychopath serial killer? Perhaps. I don’t know. However, I am sure that the vast majority do not deserve it. We as a society should and must be more altruistic. Death penalty is, in essence, a selfish act. The selfish person might “win” by revenge but the society will lose. Punishment for a crime is an acceptable course of action. Time in prison can change people – can find repentance and remorse. It will free his inner self of hate and maybe it could free the “warden or jailer” within the victim’s relatives. Forgiveness is by no mean easy. I cannot imagine myself forgiving the murderer of one of my sons – but at the end there is no escape from it. The argument of giving death for “closure” is a contradiction in terms. Closure is, in a nutshell, acceptance. There is a pathway for that: think of your own mortality.
2
What puzzles me about judges who are presumably "tough on crime" rejecting appeals or DNA tests that might prove innocent is that every wrongly convicted person represents another individual who got away with a crime. How is that being tough on crime? The only rationale that could possibly "justify" such an approach is if you believe there are certain communities/classes that have criminal tendencies, and that even if an individual was locked up wrongly for something, they're likely guilty of "something" so it's more important to be tough than to be fair.
How many conservatives who were outraged at the treatment of Bret Kavanaugh were similarly outraged at the treatment of the Central Park 5?
There is ample evidence that our system is severely biased when it comes to presumptions of guilt/innocence. AThe innocence project has revealed a considerable percentage of people who have been wrongly convicted of serious crimes. Given those realities, there should be no consideration of having a death penalty.
8
The death penalty is murder.
Murder is wrong.
That’s pretty much it.
Yes - there are heinous crimes and murder is tied with a few others for the top of the list, but a sanctioned killing is still murder and I want no part of it.
Life in prison may be worse than the death penalty, but it leaves the opportunity for the wrongly convicted to be exonerated.
Life in prison may cost more than the death penalty, but it eliminates the spectacle associated with an execution.
Lastly, if trump thinks the death penalty is a good idea and it’s use should be expanded, that’s sure sign that we shouldn’t proceed.
3
Please be aware — as Kristof says, the death penalty costs more than life in prison: “Capital punishment is far more expensive than life prison terms. This is because pretrial preparations, jury selection and appeals are all more expensive in capital cases, and death row confinement is more costly than incarceration for the general prison population. One 2017 study by several criminologists found that on average, each death sentence costs taxpayers $700,000 more than life imprisonment.”
2
@Steve Ell
Killing and murder are not equivalent. Murder has not social sanction but killing may. You can argue that the death penalty is immoral because it contradicts what you believe to be true and right according to your values. But at this time executions following due process and not cruel and unusual according to the Constitution are not murder.
People say the same thing about abortion. In a just society, some forms of taking lives is sanctioned, ie. in cases of self defense, assisted suicide. Humanity does it best, doesn't live on a slippery slope, and deserves mercy. I don't anyone was anything but relieved when Jeffry Dalmer was killed by a fellow inmate, doing what the state refused to.
1
Deterrence:
Nobel Prize Laureate (Economics) Gary Becker "is the most important social scientist in the past 50 years" (NY Times, 5/5/14)
Becker: “the evidence of a variety of types — not simply the quantitative evidence — has been enough to convince me that capital punishment does deter and is worth using for the worst sorts of offenses.” (NY Times, 11/18/07)
There have been 24 US based studies finding for death penalty deterrence, since 1996. The criticisms of those studies are, far, weaker, than the studies finding for deterrence.
Never has the deterrent effect of serious sanctions or negative incentives been negated. They can't be.
The evidence that some are deterred is significant. The evidence that none are deterred does not exist.
With few exceptions, death is feared more than life and life is preferred over death. What we fear more deters more. What we prefer more deters less.
Deterrence cannot be measured by gross murder rates.
For example, let's say Iceland and its capital Reykjavik , have the lowest crime and murder rates in the world. In all other cities and countries, does that mean that no potential criminals are deterred by law enforcement and sanction, because those other jurisdictions have higher rates? Of course not. It is ridiculous on its face.
Some criminals are deterred by law enforcement and sanction, in Iceland, just as with every other jurisdiction in the world. Some are not.
1
There are penalties for all crimes, and they never deter criminals. Whether the crime is jaywalking, running a red light, shoplifting, tax fraud, or colluding with a foreign government, criminals never consider the penalties and always commit the crimes. If criminal penalties deterred criminals from committing crimes, then there would be no crime. We see every day that penalties are no deterrent.
Embedded in American culture is the notion of enduring retribution for various crimes and transgressions. How else could we regard a sentence of 'life without the possibility of parole' as a suitable alternative to capital punishment?
We simply balk at the idea that our prisons are supposed to rehabilitate the convicted--rather than leave them to rot away or endlessly pay for their crimes. Life without parole is unrelenting punishment, absent the possibility of rehabilitation or change of character. Despite evidence of decades of 'good behavior' and decency toward others at parole hearings, a convict typically faces indeterminate incarceration.
What purpose is then served? It can only be retribution. Even upon release from prison, retribution endures. Now 'free',
the ex-prisoner is denied a fundamental right: the vote.
You would have thought that in a country where many voters self-identify as Christian, tolerance and forgiveness would be equally embedded in our culture. Actually, it is quite the opposite.
7
"Too many people are getting the death sentence who don't deserve it." Agreed, but we really should open the discussion to other forms of retribution. I remember reading about the lawyer (or maybe he was an actuary) whose job it was to calculate the amount of compensation the survivors of 9/11 in the WTC disaster would get. He considered age and pay, among other attributes, to come up with a number. How could we adapt this system when calculating how a convicted murderer should pay his debt? I don't care about punishment, unless you consider indentured servitude punishment, but I would like to see more on the payback scale and less on the years in prison or death scale. How about, Death, or choose among two or three awful jobs that most would not volunteer for, for a period of time that would reimburse a victims family an appropriate amount. If the felon is able bodied, we really should take advantage of it and get something back in return for anti social behavior like murder.
1
As Kristof states, “what is unique about the death penalty is that a person can never be unexecuted.” And the same is true of the victim of a homicide, for if we cannot “unexecute” his condemned killer, it’s just as true that we cannot resurrect the life of the victim. Therein lies the heart of the dilemma pitting both sides arguing the death penalty.
But however we stand on the issue, we ought to concede that taking a life ends the most pain that any life can experience, and two lives killed do not create a third. Putting any living person to death or out of his misery may be a mercy in some cases, whether we execute him though he is innocent, or guilty, terminally ill or to prevent inhumane torture. A legal and an illegal killing achieve the same end of a person competent to stand trial or to bear witness: A death. What we haven’t killed is the homicidal personality, the quality that makes him or her competent or eligible to be executed. And malice it is, the intent responsible for the homicidal behavior of his or her personality. And no competent person is without the capacity for malice.
1
The death penalty is unnecessary, and also assumes total accuracy, which is impossible. For these reasons no civilized society would even consider it. I read this article carefully. While there were a few anecdotes I had not heard, I did not learn anything new so the title "Everything you think you know about the death penalty is wrong." is false, as I am sure it is also false or almost everyone who read it, whether for or against the death penalty. Why muddy the issue with such a stupid title?
1
Killing the killer makes you a killer, even if you shield yourself behind the man-made laws and allow a judge, jury and executioner to handle the dirty deed for you.
424
@Tough Call
That's a circular argument. The issue is whether the death penalty is a legitimate form of killing.
2
In your view perhaps. However, based on your logic it would not be justified if a person had the opportunity to shoot and kill any of the murders of Sandy Hook, Parkland, Pittsburgh, or any of the other horrific mass shootings murdering innocent people.
4
@Tough Call
Therefore by that reason all the men of the greatest generation who killed enemy fighters to defeat Hitler are killers.. Are you saying they are just as bad, just as culpable as a murderer. Should everybody back then, declared themselves a conscientious objector.
7
A majority nationally approve. A majority of states still have it. The Federal Government retains it. The military as well. The Supreme Court should certainly stay out of it. Arguing from misapplied cases never helps the argument, either immediately or in the long term. The key is the plurality of opinion by jurisdiction. Let those who want it have it and let the rest abolish it. One's individual views are not of much moment.
3
I can't imagine spending one day in prison, let alone 40 years for a crime I didn't commit.
However, those kinds of miscarriages of justice are, extremely rare, thank God.
There is no excuse for what happened to that man, but there is an explanation: Our country has immensely high rates of serious crime, which overloads our justice system.
Obviously the fact that innocent people are executed should in itself make even the strongest death sentence proponent hesitant, but it won’t.
Let me merely comment on deterrence. When people go out to commit a crime, any crime, they do so believing they will get away with it.
They do not believe they will be arrested. If you don’t think you will be captured, convicted and punished then the severity of the punishment is irrelevant. This applies to murder obviously.
In 18th Century Britain one could be hanged for pickpocketing. But public hangings were a favorite place for these felons to ply their trade.
Most civilized countries have banned capital punishment and strangely they didn’t find that murder immediately increased.
2
An excellent column. Within the last few years, I've changed my own opinion, which used to be that "some people deserve to die." I still think that there are monsters among us who do deserve to die, but the way this country handles the death penalty is a disgrace, as Mr. Kristof says so much more eloquently than I ever could. We need to stop the death penalty if we can't reform it from top to bottom.
4
First off, I'm sorry somebody had a tough life. Lots of people do. Most don't murder other people and then try to claim it's because they had a bad childhood. There is simply no excuse to kill anyone that isn't trying to kill you. Because you're a hot head and didn't get what you want, somebody has to pay, is not cutting it as an excuse.
Second. The threat of the death penalty can be a useful tool in law enforcements hands. More than a few criminals have given up bodies or confessed to avoid being tried for a death penalty case. It may or may not, prevent crimes but muderers are clearly afraid of the death penalty once they are in custody. That threat has to be retained, even if it isn't used often.
4
Why does it have to be retained? I mean, the rest of the civilised world somehow manage without it.
So, mr. kristoff, is it your opinion that a bin laden or a hitler should be given prison sentences? There have been many crimes that make any compassion for the perpetrators, or moral outrage over their deaths, ridiculous.
4
@Stanley Gomez yes, that's exactly the idea. To avoid becoming as morally empty as they were.
Who are you trying to convince? I was with you until you compared execution of murderers to mass stoning of homosexuals, adulterers, and heretics.
Great(?) for preaching to your choir about the terrible, racist monsters who don't oppose the death penalty.
Ridiculous for people who are open to having their views changed.
Fuel for people who think it's OK to execute disabled children.
At it's very worse, actually playing into the idea that being gay has anything to do with anyone but yourself. It's hurting other people! Because, you know, that's what murder does. Really could've done without that paragraph.
1
Anon,
You are opposed to the death penalty but approve of abortion. Both kill. Why not be against the two? Each takes life away.
1
You make some good points, and I don't think anyone should be put to death if it's not 100% ironclad that they committed the murder(s) in question. But seriously, with serial killers, what else are we supposed to do? People like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Speck...they will never be rehabilitated and they are a danger to society. There's a guy in South Carolina who is on trial for the murder of his five children, which he committed with his bare hands. There is literally nothing else to be done with someone like that, except to send them off to meet their maker.
1
Maybe put them behind bars?
In most instances the death penalty does not deter crime. The exception, I'd argue, is white collar crime.
3
It should NOT be about the Death Penalty; Our entire criminal justice system is broken, and will remain so until we declare "Peace in our Time" in the War on Drugs and fund the Public Defenders at some realistic relationship to the resource allocated to prosecution.
Leaving us with a broken, toxic prison-industrial complex which neither rehabilitates ("How do you "rehabilitate" someone who was never properly socialized in the first place?") True comment from an inmate once (I was staff); And our Toxic prison culture has been exported to the streets. Dirty little secret, most inmates are eventually discharged; .
If the Republican-Reptilians truly cared about how we spend government money, there would be NO private prisons, and we would spend more on Schools than we do on prisons.
The death penalty distraction which people get all worked about when their are serious problems in our country that need addressing.
2
To me, the death penalty in America is just another uncomfortable example of irrational, illogical thinking. The most honest arguments in favor of the death penalty are probably those that focus on revenge -- because the others just fly in the face of the obvious.
And yet revenge itself is so illogical as to be, to me at least, just another example of an idea that hasn't been thought through.
Like the author of this piece, I believe our country will end the death penalty and dramatically reform our justice system one day. Until then, well written opinions like this one can help people think through their own opinions and - hopefully - move us into the future.
1
What Nicholas is describing is a form of human sacrifice that has been practiced, apparently, since the dawn of mankind. The Christian religion is based on human sacrifice, the heaping of all of humanity's sins on the head of the most innocent man on earth. The Mayans practiced a dramatic form of human sacrifice. The Romans sacrificed gladiators, whom the crowd lionized but allowed to be slain for their entertainment. Can society exist without war and human sacrifice? How do we channel the sadism and blood lust of the public? Our president, who whipped up the Central Park lynch mob, rode those forces to the pinnacle of power. What do we do with our hate?
2
For those of you who are craven for the death penalty, consider this: Do you know what happens to a human being when they are killed? No. You have no idea whatsoever. Who knows, the person you just killed may be going to a much better place, a place where their soul is free, it may very well be nirvana. Seeking biblical justice in condemning a person to death is not only an ancient remedy it is barbaric and cruel. And what if, against all odds, the person is innocent? There's no undoing dead. Punish bad people who commit heinous acts by taking their right to be free members of society. Put them in prison and let them reflect on their acts for the remainder of their lives.
3
As a Roman Catholic I am in agreement with the last four popes that in a country like the U.S., where we know we can keep vicious killers locked up, the death penalty is murder.
Catholics who are against abortion because they think it is murder, but who support the death penalty, should take note of this.
1
What do you do with convicted killers who kill in prisons? For example, Whitey Bulger was killed by two guys who were in prison for life without parole for committing murder.
To apply Bill Clinton's locution on abortion, capital punishment must be safe, legal, and rare.
How did they manage to do that? Do you just release prisoners into a pen and let them go at it in the US?
I mean, around here when prisoners escape they go to the guards kitchen and bake cake...
Susan Smith drowned her two boys, 3-year-old Michael, and 14-month-old Alexander, in a pond in Union County, South Carolina, on October 25, 1944. I grew up in Union County, and the boys' funeral was held at the small Methodist church in the mill village of Buffalo, the church sanctuary that my Dad built and that I grew up attending.
That particular crime seems like the gold standard for capital punishment. But the jury in South Carolina gave her life in prison, even though prosecutor Tommy Pope sought the death penalty.
The application of capital punishment has always for me been problematic, given the number of cases where defendants who were CERTAINLY guilty were found later through advanced forensics testing or other means to have not been guilty of those crimes.
So let's just not do it anymore. Let's lock people up, so that mistakes in prosecution can be corrected.
1
As often with diatribes against the death penalty, this article does not address the pros and cons of capital punishment when there is no doubt at all of guilt. Yes, we should strive to do much better in the thoroughness of investigation. But when, as is often the case there is no question that a person has brutally planned and killed another human being, their execution is not at all as fraught as Kristof portrays.
An added note: it is so offensive and presumptuous to subtitle this essay, “Everything you think you know about the death penalty is wrong.” Such rhetoric is typical of those with shaky perspectives!
4
You might have a better argument were there not cases of innocent people being executed. But there have been and there will be as long as Poor people often lack adequate representation and prosecutors and police occasionally put their finger on the scale, even if they sincerely believe the defendant is guilty.
It’s not as if the alternative is release. Life without the possibility of parole is no bargain!
4
@normandale: funny that you complain that there was no discussion of the pros and cons yet you actually give no pros at all.
Let me give you a couple of cons,
1. Innocent people ARE executed. Maybe the vast majority are guilty but for various reasons mistakes happen! You can fix a mistake for a lifer sentence prisoner, you can’t for someone you’ve killed!
2 It’s not a deterrent. When people commit a crime they do so in the belief they’ll get away with it. If you believe you’re not going to be punished then it doesn’t matter what the punishment is!
3. As a society we should be better than this.
Other countries, seemingly civilized, don’t execute.
ps: I believe often the headlines are not written by the columnist.
pps: I’m willing to bet that prior to reading the article you didn’t know most of the facts that Kristoff presented. Maybe the article should been titled
“Some of the things Norman Dale doesn’t know about the death penalty”. Surely you have no problem with that?
Oh, the subtitle’s just fine.
Because you didn’t read, and thus do not know that Kristof SPECIFICALLY addressed the fact that the majority of those on death row committed horrible crimes.
1
"Some day, I believe, Americans will look back at today’s executions just as we now look back at witch burnings and public hangings, and they will ask, What were they thinking?"
That's the way a lot of us look at killing a viable unborn child. But a quick Google search confirms that Mr. Kristof has no problem with casual abortions as a matter of choice.
Maybe those future Americans will see both actions - executing people convicted of horrific murders and killing unborn viable children -- as puzzling. Or maybe they'll understand the difference in killing as a form of retribution and protection of society and killing for convenience, and actually condemn the latter more than the former.
4
What a great article. Thank you for doing the research and putting this on paper for us. By reading this I just spent the most meaningful 10 mins in this week.
4
I’m pro-life. So abortion, capital punishment, and war are all immoral in my opinion. But I also think a society has a right to protect itself. Although it’s hard to imagine in the 21st Century, there is the concept of a “just war”, and the individual does have a right to self-defense.
But if a society is going to put a person to death for a crime committed, the society, as a whole, should be deeply involved in the emotional and moral consequences of that decision. Therefore all executions should be public, not hidden away in some prison. Televise the executions. Make them truly the expressions of the society. Don’t hide them away.
At least those “backward” countries that allow public stoning etc. are doing it out in the open. In that way, these countries are more moral than we are with our midnight executions in the middle of nowhere, where if something goes wrong, forcing a tortuous death, we can just casually hear about it later. And really, is there that much difference in being stoned to death and being slowly poisoned to death? Historically, all executions have been intended to be public. That’s why they took Jesus to the top of a hill and nailed Him to a cross, so that all could see this “King of the Jews”.
Aside from the “crimes” for which capital punishment is the appropriate social response, (which I admit are huge) is there really all that much moral difference between what happens here and what happens in Brunei?
1
Thank you so much for this column. Please keep up this advocacy.
2
I'm conflicted. Kristof made many good persuasive arguments, but in many cases it is extremely hard to convince me that justice is served simply because the culprit is caught and behind bars. Consider the case of the Golden State Killer. He has killed tens of people over decades up and down California. He would murder the victim and eat their food, rape the woman and tied up the man with a stack of plates on his heads. He would terrorize a whole community where people would clean out shrubs in their backyard and mobilized patrols through the night. If evil man like him is not put on death row, something does seem missing in the moral universe of our society.
3
Amidst all of this and embedded in the Republican stat is massive Evangelical support for the death penalty. This must be addressed as a part of this issue. Such support is evidence of unconverted hearts and mass apostasy. It is evidence of what God considers to be punishable evil.
To see Christians being rabid and tribal supporters of societal brutality for the purpose of revenge, either for their own corrupt and demonic sense of false righteousness, or under the excuse that justice means more brutality as a gift to the victims, is nauseating and violates even the simplest conscience.
In the end, fake pro-life Christian supporters of this form of application of this evil face grievous punishment.
2
@Jason Smith There are many -- MANY -- Christians opposed to the death penalty starting with Mennonites, Salvation Army and Friends. The Bible specifically prohibits the death penalty unless four conditions are met (Deut 17 and 19), none of which are provided for in any of the states that still practice this barbaric practice.
The problem with posts like yours is that people swallow them whole without taking any time to investigate if the comments are based on evidence.
I'd love for a detailed analysis of why the US still has the death penalty in the first place, when the majority of the rest of the developed world (Canada, most European countries, the UK, Australia, NZ) banned it. Why is US still so set on such an outdated, barbaric practice?
2
1) Death penalty serves no purpose – Beware of the principles you profess. If torture was proven to be helpful, would you advocate it?
2) Statistics are inconclusive – What do I care about statistics if my beloved is killed? If only 1 in 100 death actually had a deterrent effect and saved an innocent life, I’ll exchange for it the life of the 99 others.
3) Innocents are condemned to death – The answer is in improving the safeguards, not suppressing the DP. Workers also die when building bridges. Would you advocate stopping building bridges?
4) Death sentencing is arbitrary – With the safeguards, this plays out in favor of the criminals
5) Death penalty is expensive – You are being callous.
6) Value based condemnation have changed in time – True. But value based on innocent life taken away won’t change. Immanuel Kant is on my side on that point.
7) And … you didn’t mention the innocent lives taken away by recidivists. That doesn’t happen with the DP. And people against the DP have some answering to do about these.
8) Respectfully.
1
The issue of the death penalty has been around for more than 50 years. For all the reasons set forth in this article it needs to be terminated. Most countries have abolished it and for some reason we cannot recognize the great injustice being done in this country.
You know if you commit a murder in this country and then hope on a plane to the UK-you will not be extradited unless the US agrees not to impose the death penalty. So, for lack of money for a plane ticket you could be put to death.
1
I am against torture, not because I love terrorists, but because I am not a terrorist, and I will not sink to those tactics. I am against the death penalty not because I love murderers, but because I am not a murderer, and I will not sink to that crime. For me, it's that simple.
3
I know that I am not supposed to take an article, or even just its title as directed to me, personally.
Moreover, I know that very often the columnist is not responsible for the title.
Still, when the deck of Nicholas Kristof's paper says "Everything YOU think YOU know about the death penalty is wrong" [my emphasis] - I feel it's directed to me.
I am sorry, but the facts you recite in this moving article are not news to me. They are reason why I am, and always was, against the death penalty. By the way, according to your own data, I am not alone - 41% probably know it too. So who is the "YOU"?
I am not a piece of that continent, nor am I a part of those 56% of the main.
Kristof, you are tolling at the wrong tree.
1
If a person is innocent, and it turns out cops, prosecutors, and judges made mistakes, then you can let them out to get on with what remains of their life. You can’t do that with a corpse.
3
The lead story is a horror story. An innocent man spends 42 years in prison instead of being executed for a crime for which he was innocent. That is a mockery of justice.
The death penalty serves the original purpose of society providing retribution for crimes that in societies with weak laws end up creating destructive vendettas. It has been used to oppress people in lands where ruling elites must control masses of people who might rise up and take away their authority to rule. It also gives society the means to discourage murder for gain. But it does not stop murder driven by rage or jealousy or psychopathology.
In our system of justice, it becomes a very dangerous kind of penalty. We rely upon an adversary system to determine guilt. The prosecution must provide juries or judges proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt but the prosecution needs not provide counter evidence showing possible doubt, that is up to the defense. If the defense fails to provide such counter evidence that shows possible doubt, the defendant can be found guilt when there is a reasonable doubt. That's our adversary system.
When a defendant has a weak defense whether guilt or not, the defense counsel will often seek a plea deal to avoid harsher penalties, resulting in an innocent person being convicted of a crime.
It's not just innocent defendants who suffer. The actual perpetrators of the crimes go free to commit more crimes.
When the death penalty is involved, innocent people may die.
1
To see why we shouldn't have the death penalty look at the O.J. Simpson case. He brutally murdered his ex-wife and a friend of hers who happened to be at her house but the prosecutors didn't seek the death penalty. Why? Because people knew Simpson from T.V. and they liked him. So they might be O.K. with him going to prison but not with killing him. But with most people who commit murder, all people know about them is that they committed a heinous crime, so it's easy to look at them as a sub-human or a monster who should be executed.
After Simpson was acquitted people said the prosecutors made a mistake by not seeking the death penalty because if they had they could have eliminated jurors opposed to the death penalty, who would be more likely to acquit. So people thought the prosecutors should have sought the death penalty not because of the nature of the crimes, but for strategic reasons.
1
My sister in law was murdered by a serial killer when she was 17 years old. I never met her, but by all accounts, she was a lovely and loving young woman.
My mother in law remained against the death penalty until the day she died. For someone to have suffered this kind of wrenching loss and still believe the death penalty was and is wrong is enough for me.
4
When Satwant Singh, one of the men who assassinated Indira Gandhi, was told that his life would be spared if he asked for mercy, he replied: “My life is mine by right. I shall ask for mercy from no man.”
With those few words, he cut to the heart of the matter. No one has the right to take the life of another, no matter what the circumstances. Of course, some of us, including Mr. Singh, do kill, and we rightly subject them to punishment. But we do not have the right to take the life of another and call it justice. To include death in the range of judicial punishments is a perversion of justice, morally unsupportable, and wrong.
1
@Thomas Morgan Philip
In a world of moral people, you have presented a reasonable argument, but the world has many who have no consciences, no empathy, no moral convictions, and only fear of death can cause them not to do anything that they think will enable them to force others to submit to their will.
2
Is the death penalty really worse than life in prison though? I think it’s inhumane that people who get life in prison don’t get the process that people who get the death penalty get, or that we stop prisoners from committing suicide, even through force feeding. Capital prisoners should have the right to choose between the two.
1
I always read Mr. Kristof, he's insightful, thoughtful, intelligent, and thorough. But I have to wonder if the absurdity of this sentence of his was lost on him:
"The great majority of people executed are guilty" Let's hope it's all!
The death penalty has always been and always been about vengeance, and nothing more. There's nothing more than that to it. We spend time and energy talking about "deterrent", "closure", "justice for the victim", pretending that there's a higher moral reason to justify it, but we're deceiving ourselves.
Mr. Kristof touches on this tangentially, but in my state the smaller counties (with smaller tax resources) don't prosecute death penalty cases, can't afford to waste money on them. Lesson? If you're going to murder someone, don't do it in King County, go to Pacific County instead (our governor also has a moratorium on this barbaric practice).
Lastly, I can't think of only one positive thing about having the DP available: Leverage for a plea deal.
2
We know with near absolute certainty that there are innocent people among those currently waiting on death row. Executing people flies in the very face of our notion of justice. It says we would rather execute the occasional innocent person than allow some guilty person - who has already been removed as a threat to society - to go on living.
It's heinous.
My opposition to capital punishment is based on more than a concern for those being executed, whether innocent or guilty. This is about the rest of us and who we become when we take someone's life.
3
Near certainty? Based upon the data from the innocence project I say absolute certainty.
1
One very bright spot in the 21st century is that for the first time, we have effective proven methods for healing trauma.
Most brutal murders are committed by those who have been brutalized. Trauma begets trauma begets trauma. Maybe someday we'll mature enough to provide trauma treatment in prison.
Maybe someday the long chain of intergenerational trauma will come to an end.
3
I offer a compromise: keep the death penalty, but have Mr. Kristof personally investigate the circumstances of every murder for which the perpetrator has been sentenced to death.
2
It is interesting to me that other than during warfare, if you personally kill a person or persons you are liable for the death penalty, whereas when politicians knowingly use lies and distortions to create a war to serve their "higher" purpose, e.g. Cheney/Bush and Iraq war, Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin, etc., that results in the deaths of hundreds of thousands or millions, they suffer no consequences. Might there not be a salutary effect and considerable justice if there were a law that said if a president sent our country to war by knowingly lying and distorting events thereby creating a false justification, then he/she could be tried and upon conviction, sentenced to death for so doing? Just asking.
16
@Peter Geiser
Freud pointed out that war reverses all of our social taboos. "Thou shalt NOT kill!" becomes "Thou SHALT kill!" In war, arson is a well respected art. Look at Dresden! Look at the napalming of Vietnam!
5
I recently read a play by Charles Mee called “Iphigenia 2.0”. In it, Mee adapts the Iphigenia story in Aeschylus play “Agamemnon” in which Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia is sacrificed to the gods in order to get the winds necessary to sail to Troy. In Mee’s adaptation, it is not the gods, but the army that requires the sacrifice of Iphigenia. The reason is that as a commander leading an army into war in which he knows that the children of citizens will die, Agamemnon must prove the necessity of the war by sacrificing his own child. Seems fair to me.
The reason for the death penalty is to give the victims family, survivors, some feeling of justice. Not much else. When a loved one, perhaps your husband or wife, is brutally killed and tortured you will appreciate that capital murder charges are available to justice providers. The death penalty was never conceived to lessen crime. To all of you who believe that it should be abolished, I hope your lives are never tainted by one of the thousands of killers out there!
10
Yet millions upon millions of people live in states and countries with no death penalty who are much less likely to be killed than those who live in states with a death penalty.
1
@Noel
I have been scrolling through these comments looking for one that mentions "justice" as a reason.
Most of the reasons to support the death penalty (deterrence, cost...) do not stand up to empirical scrutiny. I believe that the only valid reason is "justice" which can also just as easily be called "revenge." This has some validity socially and historically because it dispenses the victim's family or loved ones from attempting or carrying out retribution. It snuffs out blood fueds from starting.
While I do think that this is a legitimate reason for supporting the death penalty, I also feel that it is outweighed by all the arguments against it, particularly the execution of innocent people, which should be more than rare. It should never happen. When it does, we are complicit.
At least give some credibility to other arguments.
No one has ever even tried to say that life in prison is a punishment that fits the crime of taking the only life that someone else will ever have. It is a slap on the wrist in comparison to depriving someone of their live, intentionally. You don't see a lot of people (Gary Gilmore maybe) requesting the death penalty instead of life in prison. Reason? Life in prison is still life, still eating, still laughing, still having friends, etc. etc.
Another argument: No one, not even Mr. Kristof, has volunteered to live next door to someone who has been convicted of murder, and who "repented" and has been a "different person" years later. Why not?
Studies attempting to determine whether the death penalty prevent crime can never be conducted, because the death penalty is not given systematically or frequently enough to be able to test this notion.
Nowhere in Kristof's argument is there anything about the families of the victim, and what they need when someone slaughters someone they love. Why are these people being ignored here? Inconvenient?
Mostly, Kristof's piece is argument by anecdote, carefully omitting the most important people affected by murder--i.e., the victims and their families. Give us anecdotes about the three people who entered a liquor store down the street from me, were ordered to lay on the floor, and who two people systematically shot in their heads. and then the governor commuted their sentences.
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@Travelers
But, Mr. Kristof does refer to many studies in this article. None support the death penalty as an effective punishment or deterrent to crimes.
Yes, this article would have been better if he had included the families of the victims of these crimes. I would be interested to hear if they wanted that revenge for the crime.
Your argument that "no one, not even Mr. Kristof, has volunteered to live next door..." is specious. Volunteers have never been sought and we are not letting murderers out of jail before they have served a sentence.
You have referred to cited studies as anecdotes and then provide an anecdote as if it was a study to prove your point.
I would like to know why the right-to-life crowd has not taken up the anti-death penalty cause.
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@Travelers.... It seems you are motivated by the revenge motive. Ill bet dollars to doughnuts you consider yourself a Christian.
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@Travelers: You are wrong to say, "No one, not even Mr. Kristof, has volunteered to live next door to someone who has been convicted of murder, and who "repented" and has been a "different person" years later." Ohio Governor Michael DiSalle had a convicted murder live full-time in the Governor's Mansion as a servant for a number of years. I cannot say that was or was not a one-time occurrence, but it makes your argument wrong. Governor DiSalle never regretted being wise, publicly believed the man would not re-commit, and that turned out correct.
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Nicely argued column debunking numerous falsehoods. One thing that could be added: Even the revenge factor is a bust. Watching the state execute someone, decades after the crime via lethal injection, provides little satisfaction, pro-death penalty families have said. And in the meantime they've been dragged through appeals and hearings and reversals, having to continuously relive their horror and heartbreak.
Capital punishment is so outrageous for all of the reasons in this essay that I can't bring myself to finish reading pieces like this or watch shows about the horrendous miscarriages of justice. It's beyond Kafkaesque.
4
Judicial murder is murder nonetheless.
3
Excellent piece. It boils down to feel good vs facts.
The facts:
Deterrent: Nope.
Save Money: Nope.
Applied fairly: Nope.
Punishes the guilty: Nope. 1/25 is innocent.
In the south there was a saying:
If a black man kills a white man, it is murder
If a white man kills a black man, it is unfortunate.
If a white man kills a white man, it is self defense...
Unless it was over a woman, in which case it is apoplexy.
(note, a black man killing a black man was not even worth mentioning)
2
Bravo! This piece explains the foolishness of the death penalty with passion and logic but without rancor or sanctimony.
I never quite understood how society aimed to teach that killing was wrong by then killing the alleged criminal. Let's dump the entire system and use the freed up resources to make sure that all convictions are fair.
1
Israel has the death penalty.
Not surprising.
They have used it twice. Once for Eichmann and once for a person who was later exonerated.
Seems like a rational model to follow.
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The death penalty is legalized murder.
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The death penalty is Constitutional - there is no doubt whatsoever about that.
The plain language in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment makes that unmistakably clear.
The Fifth Amendment reads:
No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
The Fourteenth Amendment reads:
...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
I will stipulate this: There should be a different standard for applying the death penalty than for other crimes.
Beyond a reasonable doubt is not good enough:
My standard is NO DOUBT AT ALL.
Jeffrey Dahmer, Manson, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro: I would pull the switch myself.
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@DennisG and by pulling that switch, you would make yourself as morally bankrupt. Talk to us again after you've pulled some switches.
I'm so glad to be a citizen of a country that doesn't murder people.
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One of the people most responsible for the Innocence Project: super-geneticist (and math-genius) Eric S. Lander. If you don't know who that is, look him up.
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Execution in our country should only be lawful for a person who commits treason against the United States of America.
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Sometimes, it seems, it must feel so good to kill another human being, whether you are a murderer or part of a lynch mob or a judge. That special feeling of righteousness must be thrilling. And when the "community" concurs, we are all made savage.
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You make a strong case, but would you have liked to see bin Laden in jail for life? What about Charles Manson, who came up for parole, forcing his victims' family members to plead against it?
3
I had to argue both sides of the capital punishment question in a debate class in the early 1970s. It was easy, and logical, for me to argue the case against the death penalty; the arguments in favor seemed flimsy and motivated by revenge rather than justice.
For me it always came down to one thing: the system, because it is designed and implemented by human beings, is flawed, fallible, and inequitably applied. Today, we outsource even our prisons to for-profit enterprises, and we are all culpable for allowing that to happen. Society should not be in the death business, making money by killing people, no matter what they may (or may not) have done.
Jurors and judges are not gods and therefore can't be given the power of life or death in the name of the state. It's bad enough that people like Clifford Williams, Jr., had 42 years taken from them, but he is still here, and entitled to restitution (however inadequate) from us all, because we were responsible for the injustices we imposed on him.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump should be careful what he wishes for. Certain political crimes are also punishable by death. I'm sure he knows that, since his favorite crooked mentor, Roy Cohn, participated in the prosecution of the Rosenbergs. And all Ethel Rosenberg did was type.
2
Thou Shall Not Kill.
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People do often evolve! Except the ones killed by murderers. They lost their chance to evolve.
As to the innocents, it would be nice to see some prosecutorial indictments to the scum who set them up. When that happens we will have justice. Suddenly, eager prosecutors won't be so eager to manipulate and lie.
As to the death penalty, I wonder if Mr. Reams turned in his friend. I doubt it.
I believe there are some people who, by virtue of committing a henous crime, deserve the death penalty. However, I support abolishing the death penalty because of the flaws in our judicial system. in short, in sentencing someone to death the system must get it right 100% of the time, anything less is a travesty. And we've proven over and over we can't meet that requirement.
1
No doubt there are plenty of errors in the death penalty as well as other cases. They should always be worked on.
I read a detailed article about the Willingham case as well as seeing a documentary about it and agree that he was almost certainly innocent. But putting him away for 50 years with no chance of correction isn't a real solution to a crappy system with little will to correct itself.
There are also plenty of cases where people continue to commit crimes and aren't going to stop without the death penalty. NYT published a story a year or so ago about a case in the SC state prison where two inmates serving long sentences for multiple murders, murdered four other inmates in cold blood. Giving them more life sentences isn't much of a deterrent. We had a case here in Georgia of an inmate, while serving a long term for murdering is girlfriend, murdered his cellmate. He was executed for the second murder. What else would have stopped him?
4
For many years, I was a strong supporter of the death penalty, for many of the reasons discussed here. Why should we pay to house criminals who will never be released? What about the victim's family? As a bargaining chip? How else would you punish the worst of the worse, especially if they commit crimes in prison? I'm grateful for Mr. Kristof's article addressing many of those falsehoods that I once believed in so strongly.
My now-husband changed my mind, by listening, providing unbiased data, and offering alternatives. What finally convinced me that we should abolish the death penalty was that it is impossible to know with 100% certainty that those sentenced to die were indeed guilty.
Who are we to judge? I have faith in a greater judgment, and whether or not that happens in the hereafter, it is not up to me. Some decisions, like death, are too great and too complex for the human soul. They are not intended for us to decide.
I still consider myself a true "law & order" type of person. I'm convinced now that for most, prison truly is hell on earth. For repeat offenders, Supermax is a heinous place to live, particularly places like FCI Florence. There is no punishment that will ever be enough for some crimes. Taking a life by government-sanctioned killing is not the answer. I believe that we will change during my lifetime, if not my children's.
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@Julia Scott
There is no doubt that the man accused of murdering 50 people in New Zealand recently is guilty. He was seen by many, he made his own recording of his deeds. But yesterday he pleaded not guilty. There will be a six week trial in a year, so the families pain will continue. This is the first time I have ever thought that the death penalty might be acceptable, but even though this has been the most heinous act and he has no remorse, I am still happy that here we do not and will not ever have the death penalty.
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@Julia Scott Who are we to judge??? I feel perfectly fine judging someone who dismembers, tortures, rapes and kills people for fun and I wouldn't lose any sleep over executing such a person, if there was 100% conviction that the person did the crime(s).
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@atb But it is rarely 100% is it? Actually, it is only beyond a reasonable doubt to convict - right? If you have lived in Illinois for the past 20-30 years you should be aware of how many people were exonerated after death sentences before the moratorium and abolishment here. Rolando Cruz might ring a bell.
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The entire "lack of" - Justice System need to be
radically overhauled.
What does it mean to have the assistance of counsel
if the Public Defender only has 15 minutes a month
to meet with you before the trial while you are locked
up in the Country Jail because you could not make bail ?
How are you to find witnesses/evidence that might
exonerate you when you are in County ?
Think how many mistakes there must be if
there are mistakes in Capital Crimes Cases -
where the greatest scrutiny is applied.
As for Mr. Cooper,
there are a large number of coincidences that
must have occurred for Mr. Cooper to be innocent
and if he is, who will the State then prosecute ?
2
Criminal justice, as practiced in most states, has little or nothing to do with justice. Its purpose is to convict a defendant and put a check mark in the "W" column of the prosecutor to advance his/her career. The actual guilt or innocence of the defendant is of no relevance to many in prosecuting a case or meting out justice.
Prosecute to conclusion, and on to the next case. Guilt or innocence is beside the point.
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Morrow stated, "I'm truly sorry for all that happened." That's a passive apology that makes no mention of his role in 'what happened.' Taking responsibility would entail saying, "I'm sorry for WHAT I DID."
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My complaint against the death penalty in CA, for example, is the money spent on appeals. In addition, an eye for an eye in murder cases does not change what happened. Life sentences without parole is sufficient
2
Excellent piece, as always Mr. Kristof. Even one article a month this well researched, this well presented, and this well argued, makes my subscription to the Times worthwhile.
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If we spent half the resources we do imposing the death penalty (resources that include, for example, my salary) preventing the horrific crimes from happening in the first place, everyone would be better off.
Fewer crimes, fewer victims, fewer executions.
We spend so much time arguing over whether revenge is an adequate justification. Maybe it is; maybe it isn't. But improve schools, expand vocational programs, and provide families with resources to deal with drug addiction, mental health problems, learning disabilities, poverty, and violence--and maybe we won't need so much revenge.
3
The stories really show how the death penalty is given with a justice system that ignores the evidence of innocence. I like to think otherwise. Thank you opening my eyes to a human (imperfect) system.
I have long said that there are people who have done things so heinous that it could warrant the forfeiture of their lives as a result.
But I also feel even more strongly that I will support the death penalty when one of two conditions are be met:
1. Our system of justice becomes infallible, or
2. The death penalty, once carried out, may be reversed.
I view each condition to be equally possible.
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This article is wonderful. I'm sharing it as far as I can, within my limited reach.
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People say a life in prison should be given rather than death. Read the article. Some of the incarcerated have reformed. Is it reasonable, then, to sentence them to life “without the possibility of parole?” To me that seems nearly as cruel as the death penalty itself.
1
I'm disappointed and baffled as to what grounds were used by Kamala Harris and Jerry Brown for forbidding the submittal of the advanced DNA test results, especially since it would not come out of taxpayer pockets.
The only reason I can come up with is they wanted to protect the 'sanctity' of a corrupted investigation and the SB Police .
Jerry is gone. Ive been an enthusiastic supporter of Kamala as a Dem presidential candidate, but unless she provide a sound reason for her decision when State AG over this case, she has lost my vote. Wheres the integrity?
2
I have, at least a couple of times, posed this hypothetical in a church setting: Let’s assume there is this guy who goes around killing Christians just for sport, simply because he disagrees with their beliefs. Based on that fact, who here would approve of capital punishment for such a criminal? Those who indicate they would are then congratulated for slimming down the New Testament by several books in executing St. Paul prior to his road to Damascus conversion.
1
Is being locked up in prison without any possibility of ever being paroled really that much better than being put to death. Those years in prison would have to pass dreadfully slow.
Did you seriously just admit to prioritizing stupid election stuff over covering a case that could determine a person's existence on earth? Wow.
"I discussed with editors the possibility of doing a deep dive into the case but let myself be lured away by the sirens of that year’s Iowa caucuses instead. I never wrote about Willingham, and he was executed in 2004."
Dylann Roof sentenced to death for killing 9 black church members in South Carolina. Is that not fair? Apparently he has more rights than the citizens to whom he administered the death penalty.
3
Not for it, but considering Trump is going to pay for his crimes I would reconsider for a day.
2
The fundamental reason why many Americans support capital punishment is because, directly or indirectly, their worldviews have been affected by the views of their Christian fore-bearers. The Old Testament God is a wrathful one. Break His laws, and you suffer for eternity. So, those who believe capital punishment is moral, are playing the role of their God here on earth.
1
The only rational justification for the death penalty, I think, is un the case of serial killers--people too dangerous to be allowed to live, for they kill without a reason, they kill because they are driven.
1
We all know from nature - like begets like. Grapes produce grapes. Apples produce apples. Figs produce figs.
Similarly, murder begets murder. Violence begets more violence.
Americans love violence. They see it as the solution to all problems - Individuals kill, the state kills, armies kill. But the problems don't go away. They get bigger, and more violent. Retribution, revenge, anger, violence, when will they ever learn?
To stop spawning more murder and violence, the circle must be broken. If we are ever to escape our bad monkey behavior and go to the stars, we must change - ourselves.
Intentional killing is evil. No killing. Ever.
- Fr. Gareth Scott Harris, SentimentalStargazer.com
2
Two Words: Timothy McVeigh. He was my own personal poster boy FOR the Death Penalty. But, I’ve changed my thinking. There is absolutely no doubt in mind mind that “ we “ have executed more than a few innocent people, even in this “modern” era. Willingham was a Victim of Texas Justice and Junk Science. Please, read about. And thanks, Rick Perry. Again. So, I’m reformed. Death cannot be undone, and it’s a total lottery in who it will affect. Mostly minorities and/or the poor. Who was the last time a wealthy person was put to Death ??? Seek, and you won’t find. Thank you, Sir.
4
It always amazes me when people who oppose the death penalty favor abortion rights. How can they justify the killing of the unborn who committed no crime other then to have been conceived and now residing in the mother's womb. I happen to be both pro life and against the death penalty except in the most extreme of cases. I am willing to compromise if it means sparing the lives of the unborn. They are totally innocent.
2
My mother had an abortion. There are exceptions which get ignored and I even don’t know all of them; rape and incest. If the child has a fatal disease. We must not label the exceptions as evil. They are not black and white, there is grey area. The life of the mother is paramount. In my opinion, I welcome disagreements
1
thanks for your good work, Mr. Kristof...you are a real mensch
3
For those of us of a certain age it's tough to read your column and not think of columnist William F. Buckley and his dedication to the cold-blooded killer of a 15 year old girl, Edgar Smith who Buckley so eloquently argued had been wrongly convicted in New Jersey to the point where Smith was released and given the opportunity to kidnap and attempt the murder of another young girl.
The death penalty is a tough call, and hard cases do make bad law; but in clear cases of heinous crimes where guilt is clear I would give the families of victims their revenge.
2
One way to look at this is to note which countries permit capital punishment. I haven’t looked up the details, but I recall that very few democracies have capital punishment.
T he U.S. could benefit from judicial police, professional police who will investigate any matter at the behest of the court.
1
@Doug Broome: I think I've heard of European legal systems where the judge is in charge of investigating the crime, as well as judging the case. That might be like what you describe. The idea of separating the process of pursuing and catching a suspect from the process of gathering evidence for the trial, might make sense -- too often (even once is too often) the police settle on one suspect to convict, when they should still be looking for more evidence of what really happened.
1
While reading this article I recalled the words of Justice Harry Blackmun in his dissenting opinion renouncing the death penalty in the 1994 Supreme Court case of Callins v. Collins. After more than two decades of trying "to develop procedural and substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty" he recognized the futility of this endeavor, and stated that "I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death." Twenty-five years later we are still tinkering with the machinery of death, but the results haven't gotten any better.
3
The Death penalty puts America at the same moral and ethical level than Saudi Arabia, Iran… China…
Ponder that a second.
Europeans haven’t executed anyone in decades… Think how morally more advanced they are.
5
Maybe for tomorrow’s juggling act let’s argue against capital punishment while arguing for abortion at the same time. A true test of any language is how many different directions the same words can be stretched.
1
@John Doe Comparing the two issues only makes sense if you believe that (1) a human being exists at the time of conception and (2) the conflict of that life and a woman's right to control her body must be resolved in favor of the embryo/fetus. Instead of looking for moral comparisons, how about focusing on the cruelty and uselessness of capital punishment except as a political football, which was, after all. the subject of the op-ed piece.
4
@John Doe: Many people executed may have begun life as unwanted children. It is bad for anyone's mental health.
If killing the killer would bring the victim back to life, I'd be all for capital punishment. But it doesn't.
So the burden of proof, for those who would kill the killer, is to show that doing so does some good. But it doesn't.
Capital punishment makes us all killers, and sometimes, killers of innocent, though convicted, people. In our society it is also racially biased and biased against those too poor to hire top lawyers.
Finally: If you're against capital punishment you will be barred from even serving on a murder jury. How is that fair?
478
@Howard
No it doesn't bring the dead back to life but it does prevent a killer from killing again so it works from that stand point.
4
@Howard. You don't even know it is the killer. We get it wrong frequently.
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@Howard we don’t have the jury system in my country, and I am happy for that. I don’t believe that justice can be done by employing amateurs anyway. But your final paragraph is truly outrageous.
3
I went to a Catholic boys high school where the students studied religion as part of the curriculum. One day, the regular teacher, a Marist brother, was away from school, so another Marist brother filled in, and lacking a lesson plan to follow, he raised several moral issues for the class to discuss. One of them was capital punishment, and every classmate who spoke up said he was for it. But I wasn't and I said so. I said it was wrong. One of my classmates must have thought he had a slam-dunk win when he asked me, "What if it were your mother or your sister?" Meaning, of course, what if someone had killed my mother or sister. How would I feel about it then? But I replied, "Then I wouldn't be the one to decide."
1
Thank you Mr. Kristoff for your efforts and passion regarding capital punishment. At this junction in our country's history, anything Mr. Trump and his Party are in favor, such as Capital Punishment, I almost reflexively oppose.
1
There is no answer to be found in the death penalty debate as long as we use measures like cost and prevention and community values as deciding factors. We will never agree on these things and we know it.
The only issue is whether the state has the right to take the life of a citizen, for any reason, at any time. Is the state the guarantor of individual rights such as life and liberty, or is it an ad hoc revenge machine killing when politics and hysteria guide its hand? The question here is: what is the state? The question here is: is the life of an individual greater or lesser than the state?
Anyone who has read our declaration of independence knows what our founders believed and what a truly moral state was supposed to look like. We have drifted far from those original ideals, in fact we now repudiate most of them without missing a heart beat. A just Supreme Court would simply say that capital punishment is banned because it exceeds the just power of the state, not because it is applied capriciously or unfairly, but that it should not be applied at all. Taking such a position on a national basis says something about the whole country that is much more important than the death penalty debate. It says that this country takes the idealistic moral position that killing in all forms is wrong. That is a position that could spark a rebirth of concern for our fellowman that could lift this country out of its current sick capitalist theocratic malaise. It would be a thing to see.
5
I am opposed to the death penalty for a whole host of reason but it has always seemed to me that life in solitary with no hope of parole was actually a more fearsome punishment than death.
1
Now that we have DNA evidence we should expand the use of the death penalty and use it in cases of almost incontrovertible certainty of guilt.
People need to know that a quick death is going to result from murder, rape and kidnapping, or a history of violent acts.
It is hypocritical to be pro-choice and against the death penalty. Lives taken by the death penalty are far less valuable in potential than many who die
1
@Jay Sonoma: We have been using DNA evidence for quite a while, and all the arbitrariness of the legal system remains. It's not just about getting somebody's blood on your shirt, it's about possible justification, ameliorating circumstances and so on. In other words, it's substantially about how good a lawyer you can afford, and whether the jury takes a dislike to you. And that's when there's DNA involved, which isn't always the case.
One of the great ironies to me is those people that are pro-life are also pro-death penalty....Life is more valuable in a womb than in the world?
3
Does the state have a right to take a person's life? How about we pose that question to the family members of the many tens of thousands killed by the U.S. military -- in the Middle East, for instance.
1
I have never been able to see the point of the death penalty. I also have always thought those who favor it are demented themselves. We have too many flaws in our country to accept this.
We do nothing to change the number of shootings in schools and other places. What is the matter with Americans. We have been given so much and turn around and kill innocent people all the time. As time goes by we don't get better but we get worse. And now we have a president who thinks he knows it all. And in reality he knows very little. We voted him (almost) into office and he proves how vacant he is but we do nothing to get rid of him. What is the matter with Americans? And mostly what is the matter with the Republican congress? They make things worse and do nothing to correct their mistakes. We are supposed to be a democracy but in fact the public has no power at all except in rare cases.
4
And the same conservatives that advocate for the death penalty claim to want to protect life at any cost when a women is pregnant with an unwanted fetus. So this is what happens, women (or girls, as this article points out) have unwanted children who are abused and neglected, have a horrific childhood and then end up in the criminal justice system on death row. And it is unproportionally poor people and non-whites who suffer in this way.
2
Kamala Harris, as California's attorney general, refused to allow a defendant (facing a life sentence) access to DNA testing? Such a person is NOT fit to be POTUS. Her "apology" and flip/flop on this matter, now that she's trying to become POTUS, MUST be regarded as disingenuous at best.
4
And it was in a blue state. That surely wouldn’t have penalized her for seeking DNA testing. So even her political motivation for refusing testing was weak. I think it reflects her character, and not well.
She doesn’t deserve the nomination. If she is nominated I will write in Kevin Cooper.
2
A problem that I do not see mentioned in Mr Kristoff's piece is the socioeconomic, hence racial, skew. It is not applied equally and poor people (hence black and Latino) are disproportionately sentenced to death: https://www.aclu.org/blog/smart-justice/mass-incarceration/death-penalty-maintains-racial-inequality ("Death Penalty Maintains Racial Inequality," 2009). Attempts to fix this have mostly failed. This is a cruel joke under the assumption of equal justice under the law. A good bit of this relates to the quality of legal representation through a long an grueling trial process.
The death penalty is immoral. There is no question about it. It satisfies only society's worst desire - the lust for blood. As set forth in the article, it does not deter criminals, is expensive and is applied in a discriminatory fashion. The people who really irritate me are those who are anti-abortion but are also pro-death penalty. To quote my favorite character, Harry Bosch, either everybody counts or nobody counts.
3