NOTICE: The following
article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to
violate their copyright. I will give some information on them. On this date,
November 6, 2012, Proposition 34 was defeated in California. I chose this
article as the article on the death penalty of the week to honor the defeat of
evil.
PAGE
TITLE: http://www.ocregister.com/
ARTICLE
TITLE: Capital punishment is necessary; No on Prop.
34
DATE: Tuesday October 23,
2012
AUTHOR: Benjamin Zycher
AUTHOR INFORMATION:
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Benjamin
Zycher
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Remember Jesse James Hollywood? He is serving a
life sentence (without the possibility of parole) for the kidnapping and murder
of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz in August 2000. His case is a classic example
of why an effective system of capital punishment must be established and
preserved, and thus why Proposition 34 must be defeated Nov. 6.
After Hollywood "called his lawyer and learned
the severe penalty for kidnapping, police say, [Hollywood and his accomplices]
decided they had to kill Nicholas" (Los Angeles Times, Aug. 26, 2001). In
other words, since the penalty for kidnapping was a life sentence, or close to
it, the marginal (or "extra") penalty for murdering the young and innocent
Markowitz was perceived to be small to zero, in that the actual application of
capital punishment in California was, and remains, both unusual and subject to
long delay.
More generally: If a criminal faces a life term for
a given crime, and if there is no effective threat of a death sentence, why not
get rid of the witnesses? Stiff penalties deter crimes – the scholarly
literature is quite clear that most criminals respond rationally to incentives
– but if the structure of the penalty system makes even stiffer penalties
difficult to impose, that structure actually can encourage crimes even more
egregious.
Consider the California "three strikes"
law. The first two strikes must be felonies that are serious and/or violent.
But the third strike carries a life term for any felony, whether or not serious
or violent, so that a two-strike criminal pondering his next offense faces the
same life sentence for attempted murder, auto theft, or mere drug possession.
Yes, California has adopted discretion on the part
of prosecutors and judges as to whether to count certain crimes as third
strikes. But such an ad hoc approach is problematic both in practice and as a
general principle in a nation that is supposed to be governed by a rule of law.
(This is why conservatives interested in a serious public stance toward crime
should vote "Yes" on the Proposition 36 effort to reform the
"three-strikes" law so that only serious or violent third strikes may
result in life sentences.)
Moreover, the third-strike discretion now used is
useless in the context of the most serious crimes in the absence of capital
punishment. Such crimes as attempted murder, aggravated rape or kidnapping for
ransom are so egregious that they appropriately carry very stiff penalties
approximating life sentences. In the absence of capital punishment, that
necessarily reduces the marginal penalties for offenses even worse, a state of
affairs that can be predicted to increase the rate at which such terrible
crimes are committed.
One way around this deterrence problem is to reduce
penalties for the large array of lesser crimes so as to preserve marginal
deterrence for the more serious ones. But that would yield an increase in the
rate at which the lesser crimes – many of which are hardly trivial – are
committed, and might actually increase the rate at which the truly serious
crimes are observed, in that some such offenses are unplanned outcomes of
lesser felonies.
After all, for example, some murders committed
during convenience-store holdups are not envisioned by the robbers beforehand.
In short, an attempt to preserve marginal deterrence by reducing penalties
across the board is likely to increase serious crime generally. And given the
very small likelihood that an innocent actually will be executed, such an
across-the-board reduction in penalties is likely to increase the taking of
innocent life on net, in this case by criminals rather than by state
governments.
Therefore, a society serious about deterring
egregious crimes generally and murders in particular, and anxious to use
punishment as a moral expression of the value of innocent life, must have an
effective system of capital punishment.
Both the moral pursuit of justice and the practical
preservation of political support require that those accused of capital crimes
be given the resources – say, $500,000 – necessary for a serious defense and
appellate process. This hardly would be an important fiscal burden in a state
with a GDP approximating $2 trillion, whatever our economic and fiscal
problems. Such a political compromise restoring an effective system of capital
punishment might also include a new state court of appeal specializing in
capital cases, combined with strict time limits on the number and length of
appeals. This new court would be subordinate to the Supreme Court, but the
latter would be likely to accept few or no appeals from the former.
The common argument that a humane society cannot
risk even one execution of an innocent is misguided: Just as most of us risk
death daily in order to drive automobiles, participate in extreme sports, or
watch the Lifetime channel, it is axiomatic that virtually anyone would be
willing to bear the infinitesimal risk of wrongful execution in order to obtain
the far more important reductions in serious crime that an effective system of
capital punishment makes possible.
Capital punishment is an extremely difficult
business. The alternative is worse.
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