From: zursch@sgi.com (Jeffrey B. Zurschmeide)
Subject: Re: Death Penalty in California : -(
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Distribution: ca
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 18:56:26 GMT

rjwill6@PacBell.COM (Rod Williams) writes:
>}I disagree.  What balance?  Instead of one dead person,
>}you now have two dead people.  If human life is so
>}precious, why does the state have any more right to kill
>}people than an individual?  As another poster already
>}said, the death penalty devalues life, turns murder into
>}a game of tit-for-tat.  You kill someone, we kill you.
>}If we really valued life, we'd force a murderer to spend
>}the rest of his/her life considering the enormity of that
>}crime.  Instead, we're about to prove the murderer's
>}point -- that life is indeed cheap.

There have been three points I've seen brought up in today's
posts against the death penalty. Quickly summarized, they are
that deterrence doesn't work, that the murderer should spend
time contemplating the enormity of his or her crime and that 
we shouldn't execute RAH (no, not Heinlein, he's already dead.) 
because he suffers from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. 

The first two go together. Deterrence certainly works for most
of us. As another poster said, most of us wouldn't kill someone
even if we knew we wouldn't get caught. That's true. But penalties
for serious lawbreaking (and even minor lawbreaking) keep us in 
line in a very serious way. Which of us would not be tempted to 
grab a bag of money if we found an unattended armored car? I'd
be tempted but I wouldn't do it. Both because it is wrong to steal
and also because I would not risk losing all that I have built
in my lifetime for a bag of money. This is multiplied many times
for murder. I might be tempted to murder someone who I felt was
beyond sufferance. Say for example, Laurence Singleton, the man 
who raped a 15 year old girl and cut her arms off with an axe
and left her to die in a ditch. Punishment for that crime is
an effective deterrent for me, and so I don't consider that 
alternative. Why doesn't this same deterrence work for others? 
No matter how poor you are, I can't believe that you would think
that you stood a better chance of bettering your condition through
murdering teenagers for the fun of it and spending the rest of your
life in prison....

As far as "contemplating the enormity of the crime" goes...if 
someone is the type of person who kills two teenagers and then
eats their lunch while chuckling about it, I doubt that he's
going to sit around the prison in quiet contemplation of the
wrongs he performed. Any such person would be likely to be 
stopped from performing the acts in the first place by the
deterrent effect! More likely, he'll just be mad at society 
for punishing him and become worse, not better. 

The anti-deterrence argument and the "he should sit there and
contemplate" argument sound to me like PJ O'Rourke's biblical account
of the man who was traveling down the road and was attacked
by robbers who left him bleeding in the ditch and two Samaritans
came along and said "The people who did this really need our
help" - and went off to find them. I doubt that RAH would spend
his prison term in quiet contemplation. Those who would do that 
wouldn't have brutally murdered people in the first place! 

As for the argument that we shouldn't punish him this way because
he's brain-damaged, what that essentially says is "We shouldn't
punish him because he's stupid and therefore not responsible."
Whether he's stupid because his mother drank whiskey or hit
him on the head or even because of an organic abnormality doesn't
wash with me. The vast majority of people, regardless of intelligence
level, don't murder people and eat their lunches. This society has
had too many people trying cover up the fact that there are mean 
people in the world. RAH is one example of this phenomenon. I can't
see wailing about "Oh, he must be that way because his mommy beat him
and therefore we shouldn't execute him for killing people." I think
that's fluffy thinking. There are plenty of survivors of abuse who 
don't kill people. What are we going to do, limit the death
penalty to PhDs? It strikes me as ultimate lunacy to offer stupidity
as an acceptable excuse for misanthropic violence. There are plenty
of brain-damaged/retarded/FAS people out there who are perfectly
fine members of society and who don't hurt others.

As I reread, the heat level in this post is getting a little high. 
My purpose here is not to ridicule those who oppose the death 
penalty, but to state why the common arguments against it don't
work with me. As I said before, I'm not supporting it out of 
revenge, but out of a desire to see dangerous people permanently
removed from our midst. 

Before you flame me, be sure you have read my previous post where
I outline my criteria for what constitutes a good death penalty 
case. In short, I think that it should never be used against someone who 
maintains their own innocence of the crimes, I think it should
be televised, along with a dramatization of the crime(s), and I
think that citizens should be called upon (but be free to decline)
to "pull the lever". 

More grist for the mill,

JZ
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