It’s time to kill the death penalty.
That isn’t to say there aren’t transgressions worthy of death—like murder, treason and leaving a voicemail when a text would suffice.
I’m just not sure government, in all its flaws, should determine who should be allowed to breathe and who should have toxins injected into their veins.
Conservatives are right to be skeptical of trusting government to wisely spend their money, but many have no problem empowering that same government to subject human beings to a firing squad. It’s as ironic as a man covered in tattoos claiming to have commitment issues.
Of course, they’d argue that taxes apply to the innocent and the death penalty is only used for the most deviant among us. They cannot fathom an otherwise functional, contributing member of society even contemplating committing murder. My wife would kindly point out these people have clearly never been married to me.
Historically, the death penalty can be traced back to Mosaic Law and its prescription for an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The idea is that the punishment should match the crime—literally. If you kill someone, death is the prescribed antidote.
But society and crime have evolved to a level of sophistication where it renders the Mosaic model obsolete. We no longer communicate via burning bushes and a punishment literally matching the crime in most cases is no longer practical or even possible.
For example, how do you go about punishing somebody convicted of masterminding a Ponzi scheme—Utah’s most en Vogue white-collar crime— under mosaic law? I can only imagine what a judge might say.
“The jury, having reached its guilty verdict, you are hereby sentenced as follows: you will take on the persona of a gullible old widow with $50,000 of life savings. You are going to sit in a living room adorned with floral wallpaper, shag green carpet, tacky art and pictures of kids we will call your grandchildren.
“Before long Jim—or as he likes to refer to himself, Brother Stevens—is going to pay you a visit. He’ll be wearing a custom Italian suit with an expensive watch. He will ooze success.
“He’ll casually mention his prestigious calling in the church, which immediately captures your trust. You’ll be smitten by his charm and before you know it you will have invested the entire $50,000 in a business venture you don’t understand.
“You will later discover you were simply investing in his lavish lifestyle. You’ll spend the rest of your life in poverty. Your children and grandchildren will never visit knowing there’s not an inheritance at stake. Time that would otherwise be spent with family will now be used doing very sad interviews on late-night news programs about how you lost it all.
“Towards the end of each news segment, there will be a scene of you sitting on a park bench stoically looking across an empty horizon—a metaphor for your future—while the narrator puts the finishing touches on the story before transitioning to the latest instance of a teacher having sex with a student. An eye for an eye.”
Clearly, applying Mosaic Law to 21st-century criminal jurisprudence is problematic.
By no means am I minimizing the devastation of someone losing a loved one to a heinous crime. If that happened to me I’d want to subject them to a torture regime that made a Vietnamese prison camp seem like a trip to Disneyland. And while we are often emotional creatures, our government shouldn’t be. If recent American history has taught us anything, it’s that governing via ever-changing emotional impulses doesn’t work well.
To be sure, Moses had a great run. Nobody can deny that. He freed the Israelites and that thing he did with the Red Sea was, well, unbelievable. But maybe it’s time to sacrifice his penal code in favor of a higher law his sacrifices were foreshadowing.
If you’re looking beyond biblical edict for guidance, perhaps consider instances of prosecutorial misconduct that have only been discovered post-execution. Or the too-many-to-count cases where advances in forensic science exonerate a convicted inmate sitting on death row that spares innocent life.
That we can also save some taxpayer money—in addition to curbing government overreach—by foregoing the requisite appeals and associated costs, renders the abolition of the death penalty not only the right course of action.
But also the conservative thing to do.
I disagree with your commentary on the removal of the death penalty. Although it may be true that our justice system makes mistakes from time to time, cases in which the death penalty is to be considered are complicated and are treated as such. When in doubt, the death penalty should be taken off the table, but in cases in which a clearly innocent life is taken with little or no remorse on the side of the clear perpetrator, the death penalty must come into play. (See Alma 1 in the Book of Mormon) Life is precious and it belongs to each of us to work out our mortality. To have it taken for vain and foolish reasons requires the strongest deterrents, hence the death penalty. And the deterrent must be carried out to give it validity. No one trusts a wall that keeps moving. I have my issues with our justice system which seems to have no justice in it and perpetual violates our constitutional right for a speedy trial, but it is the system that has been corrupted and needs to be fixed not the removal of the death penalty.
What an embarrassing lack of understanding of the law of Moses.