Death Row

Tonight, I watched an episode of a show on the Showtime network called "Penn & Teller's Bull____". This is a show whose premise was wonderful in the first two seasons. Since then (we're now in season four) it has declined dramatically.

The premise is that entertainers Penn & Teller examine and debunk some of the "bull____" of daily American life. They began, in the first two seasons, with shows that tended to have good science to back up their position. One episode that I quite enjoyed was on bottled water. They presented a lot of evidence, such as the fact that government regulations for water purity are stronger for tap water than they are for bottled in many areas. They tested water quality. And then they found a fancy restaurant willing to let them play a bit, and they got an actor to play the fake position of “Water Steward”, and set up a fake water list (like one normally sees for wines), and had people trying these various exotic waters... which were in fact all filled from a hose in the back of the restaurant. Most of the restaurant patrons swore they could taste the difference, expressed preferences for one over another, and definitely said they preferred the $5/glass "exotic" water they'd chosen over the free tap water at the table.

So, you'll understand why I've become disillusioned with this show in the latter two seasons (3 and 4), when they seem to have run out of issues for which they can present hard fact, and instead are choosing morality issues, for which their arguments are less based on debunking fact and more based on careful choosing of which side they label as "experts" and which they label as "whack jobs".

The episode I watched tonight was on the death penalty, and they chose to present the pro-death penalty argument as "bull____", and their argument boiled down almost uniquely to the moral merits of the argument "killing is wrong".

The sick thing is, I agree with them, but not at all for the reasons they present. I have no moral qualms what so ever about putting to death a person who wantonly and willfully rapes and kills a child (just as one particularly heinous example). Adolph Hitler, Slobodan Milosevich, Saddam Hussein; each was guilty during his rule (if history is accurate) of mass killings, and I not only wouldn't have a problem with having any of them put to death, I wouldn't be particularly offended if they were subject to a slow, painful, agonizing, torturous death. (How's that for an argument by someone who doesn't support the use of torture in war time?)

The reason not to have a death penalty is simple: Human beings make mistakes. Until there's a way to determine with 100% accuracy all of the circumstances surrounding the commission of a death-warranting crime (including absolute proof of the identity of the guilty party or parties and absolute knowledge of any extenuating circumstances), and until there's a way to make sure the statutes are applied fairly in all cases (no selective prosecutions based on race, income, standing in the community, etc), it's simply not reasonable to kill anyone.

One statistic presented on the show (as a straw man by one of the pro-death penalty arguers) was that "some have said that there are over a hundred innocent people on death row". He knocked this straw man down quite vehemently by stating that his own research indicated there were maybe 20 or 25 tops. Really? Have we sunk so far from the ideals of "better for 10 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be wrongly imprisoned" to "Ah well, it's only 20-25 people out of thousands on death row that we're going to kill incorrectly. That's acceptable collateral damage." Probably not so much if you're one of the 20-25 people.

And the simple fact is, we can't KNOW how many innocent men are on death row. We know it happens, there are documented cases of people being released after a long death row stay when DNA evidence exonerated them and convicted another party. This particular show presented the case of one man who was on death row for five years, in spite of the fact that he was in prison for car theft at the time that the murder for which he was convicted occurred. He was freed when it was determined that the two witnesses on whose testimony his conviction was largely based were lying, because they themselves were the killers. Even after this new evidence came out, it took two years for the wrongfully convicted man to be taken off of death row. And the kicker is that the prosecution apparently knew all along that he had been in prison at the time of the murder, so they'd known that he was innocent. But they had a pretty good case against him nonetheless (hoping the public defender wouldn't find that information), and so they prosecuted. (For those who are wondering, the wrongfully convicted man was white, not that it matters).

It really doesn't matter what the percentage is of people wrongly on death row. We should abolish the death penalty for the guilty in order to protect the innocent in the same way we provide for basic required standards of proof which occasionally grant rights to the guilty, not so that we can afford comfort to the guilty, but so that we can ensure that the innocent get a fair trial.

Anything else is a barbaric disregard for innocent human life that is antithetical to the core philosophies of our society.

Liam.

P.S. For those who are still struggling with how I can be against torture but not against torture, there are two reasons:

1. Because torture isn't necessarily practiced upon those who are guilty of any crime other than that of following nationalistic pride or dictatorial terror in carrying out the orders of superior officers. Torture is generally carried out on those who are caught, which is more often the grunts, the low level officers, and perhaps the innocent civilians in the area. It is rarely practiced upon the generals, and just about never on the political leaders of the enemy.
2. And because I don't believe our grunts, low level officers and innocent civilians should be subjected to torture if captured in war time, and it's kind of hard to take the high road and be incensed at the torture of our soldiers if we're doing it to theirs.