Congressman Delahunt, also a former prosecutor, is concerned that our current system of administering the death penalty is far from just. In my own home state of Wisconsin, at least eleven active and former state and Federal prosecutors have said that executions do not deter crime and could result in executing the innocent. Michael McCann, the well-respected District Attorney of Milwaukee County, has said that prosecution is a human enterprise bound to have mistakes. They are finding that it is bad for law enforcement. Recently, when police chiefs were asked about the death penalty, they said that it was counterproductive.
Capital cases are incredibly resource-intensive.
They do not yield a reduction in crime proportional to other, more moderate law-enforcement activities. A former police chief of Madison, Wisconsin, for example, has said that he fears that the death penalty would make police officers' jobs more dangerous, not less so. He expressed concern that a suspect's incentive to surrender peacefully is diminished when the government has plans to execute. Ours is a system of justice founded on fairness and due process. The Framers of our democracy had a healthy distrust for the power of the state when arrayed against the individual.