Mon Jan 08, 2007 at 08:24:48 PM EST
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| Last week, New Jersey General Assemblyman Michael Carroll made Blue Jersey the topic of a blog post. Juan, in good humor, gave the Assemblyman the honor of the Quote of the Day. Of course, opposing blogs flaming each other is hardly anything new. But I wanted to take a moment and thank Assemblyman for actually going on the public record and for embracing blogging as a means of telling the public what he thinks. By way of thanks, I'd like to give him an answer to some of the questions he raises.
Mr. Carroll writes: Anyone who unreservedly supports capital punishment needs professional help. That anyone would uncritically support empowering the same government which can’t count votes correctly, deliver mail timely, or provide a decent education economically, with the right to take a life, strikes me as outrageous.
I'm not sure I'd say people "need professional help" because they disagree with me politically. His anti-government screed, however, doesn't strike me as a compelling reason to disallow government the power to take the lives of its citizens. What happens if the government suddenly gets a vote count right (something it does regularly), delivers mail correctly and on time (something I rarely have a problem with), or that education can be delivered cheaply (something that has been done regularly up until the last twenty years or so)? Do we say, "Well, we reduced the cost of education, let's fire up the death machine!"? |
| Thurman Hart :: Encouraging a Thrown Gauntlet |
| My problem with the death penalty isn't rooted in fear of the government, it's rooted in fear of the people who make up a jury and the ease with which they can be manipulated. I know that I'd be very interested in vengeance if anyone hurt my kids - and I'm not sure of the extent to which I can separate that feeling as a juror from someone else in a similar position. The pressure to convict in capital cases can be overwhelming.
One cannot read the reported cases on death penalty cases without putting the volume down in horror and disgust. Crimes so vile, so cruel, so unspeakable, that one wonders that a human being could even entertain the thought behind them.
This is exactly the point. The horror of the case can easily overwhelm your senses. It can overwhelm the ability of investigators to follow due process and use professional diligence and judgment correctly. It can overwhelm the ability of prosecutors to determine when a case should not be prosecuted because of weak evidence. It can overwhelm the determination of the judge on which evidence to allow or not. It can overwhelm the good reason of the individual jurors. As Mr. Carroll points out, there are crimes so horrific that you cannot look on them dispassionately. In those cases - especially in those cases - the pressure to convict that I mentioned above is amplified by the emotions attached to the crime.
Mr. Carroll reduces his argument to a single point:
The question presented with respect to capital punishment should be a fairly simple one: are there some actions for which no other response adequately expresses society’s outrage, and which protects it – and all of its members – from the possibility of repetition?
That's a good question - but that's only the beginning of the questions we should ask. The hallmark of Conservative philosophy, which Mr. Carroll purports to hold, is that the primary question on government action is never whether or not it is expedient or even if things would be better if it took action. No, the primary question is whether or not it is proper to entrust government with that much power. If government cannot be entrusted to utilize the power in a dispassionate and equitable fashion, then the answer is "absolutely not". Since it is impossible to shield the jurors - who in this case are agents of the government - from the emotional manipulation and our current system overwhelmingly favors death for the economically disadvantaged and racial minorities, the only legitimate answer to the question has to be "absolutely not".
He further reduces it to this:
In short, anyone whose morality impels him to oppose executing murderers, but who offers not a word of protest about the wholesale slaughter of unborn children, simply merits very little deference.
Yes, anyone who doesn't believe in Mr. Carroll's political and, possibly, religious beliefs is not to be taken seriously or given deference. That, from what I can tell, is not the heart of Conservative thought, but more along the lines of fascist thought. Perhaps Mr. Carroll is unsure about his true political allegiances.
He also misleads:
He avers, though, that 100 men have been found innocent after being on death row. Wrong. Some got off on legal technicalities, there being little question about their guilt.
Here is a list of the people which Juan mentioned. It states clearly that:For Inclusion on DPIC's Innocence List:
Defendants must have been convicted, sentenced to death and subsequently either-
a) their conviction was overturned AND
i) they were acquited at re-trial or
ii) all charges were dropped
b) they were given an absolute pardon by the governor based on new evidence of innocence.
Again, Mr. Carroll:
But to the extent that [the innocent were released] were, that means the system, as flawed as it is, works.
Seeing as how more than a decade passed between some of the convictions and their final release, I don't think this is a particularly compelling argument. Then you have this case - and if you think that's a singular event in history, I'm accepting bids on a bridge to Brooklyn.
And, to my knowledge, not a single one of those cases originated in New Jersey.
Yes, Mr. Carroll, that's a compelling argument - other people have killed innocent people or imprisoned them for a long time, but we haven't been caught screwing up that badly yet. The emphasis of that would have to be on the "yet".
He then descends into pure silliness: Indeed, it’s not entirely correct to contend that no death row inmate has been executed in New Jersey since 1963. One man, abiding the official executioner, found justice at the hands of his fellow inmates, from which there could be no appeal to a sympathetic judiciary.
Unless the inmate was on the state payroll when he committed the act, then it isn't an execution but simply another murder. I fail to see why we would want to exalt such an act as being exemplary in any case whatsoever.
In trying to undermine the anti-death penalty argument, Mr. Carroll resorts to more misleading and patently false arguments:
Consider the infamous "Bird Man of Alcatraz". Sentenced to jail for viciously killing a man, he tried to murder a fellow inmate, assaulted a hospital orderly, the succeeded in murdering a jail guard.
If you check out the facts of the case, you'll find that Robert Stroud only received the death sentence for the final crime of killing a jail guard - so the problem wasn't that he acted like this because he had no hope of getting out. He was jailed for twelve years for killing a man in Alaska - and after he killed a guard he was sentenced to death and held in solitary until his execution.
Mr. Carroll opines: What would one say to the family of that dead guard? If he had been initially sentenced to death, was preserving the life of this vicious miscreant worth another, completely innocent life?
I don't know what you say to his family - we could ask the President what he says to families of fallen soldiers, except it appears he doesn't actually talk to them. Stroud seems to have been the sort to have killed regardless of his term - and it wasn't the death penalty that stopped him from doing so but solitary confinement. He could have been held in solitary for fifty more years in perfect safety. Why couldn't we just short-circuit the process and kill him faster? Well, our legal system doesn't work that way - you only get tried for the crimes you have committed. As far as lives being worth other lives, if your argument is that human life is inherently valuable, then I fail to see how you can make that judgment without abandoning your original premise.
Again: Too, what’s to prevent some misguided Governor from issuing a pardon, in the interests of "humanity"? Recollect, Jimmy Carter did precisely that, pardoning terrorists who shot up the House of Representatives. Bill Clinton did precisely that, pardoning terrorists convicted of sedition and weapons offenses. Stranger things have happened.
I agree. Stranger things have happened - like Ronald Reagan selling weapons to destabilize Central America after Congress banned him from doing so. As far as pardons go - well, the current President hasn't been shy about pardoning people, either - including weapons offenses. The issue of pardons, though, is entirely separate from the death penalty. What prevents bad pardons? The same electoral system that, supposedly, constrains all other governmental office-holders' actions.
To deal with Mr. Carroll's other arguments:
Most of them have never met the government program they didn’t trust – except, perhaps, the military and law enforcement – and would happily consign 1/9th of the economy – that representing health care – to exclusive governmental control.
I don't know any people like this. I'm willing to bet the Assemblyman doesn't, either. It makes a good sound-bite, though. Truth, apparently, is the first casualty of the Assemblyman's haste to endorse the death penalty.
The overwhelming majority of those who oppose executing the unquestionably guilty display not the slightest trepidation about executing the patently innocent – the unborn.
Again, this is a good soundbite. However, to buy into his argument, you have to embrace the idea that unborn are fully alive - because you can't execute someone who isn't fully alive anyway. It's also, without question, a huge lie to say that liberals have "not the slightest trepidation" about abortion. Say that some don't and I'll go along with that. None less than Bill Clinton often stated that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare". You don't throw "rare" in the equation unless you realize that there are issues attached that cause "trepidation".
Consider this statement from the Episcopal Church: We regard all abortion as having a tragic dimension, calling for the concern and compassion of all the Christian community.
Also note this article where the Archbishop of Canterbury: speaks of being "puzzled" by politicians who oppose abortion, yet see nothing wrong in using and selling arms
and:
Dr Williams wrote: "I am genuinely puzzled by political parties, governments or churches that appear to find a greater moral problem in abortion than in the manufacture, marketing and use of indiscriminate weaponry, from cluster bombs and poison gas to nuclear warheads."
When you can find Mr. Carroll dealing with the issue, it always comes back to this:
Abolition of capital punishment will not improve our state morally. Just as no one should ever celebrate an execution, however richly the subject deserved it, so one should not celebrate the removal of that weapon from society’s arsenal. Certain crimes, in my view, can be adequately addressed in no other way.
As I pointed out, that is only the first question that needs to be asked about the death penalty. I fail to see what good is done by the Assemblyman rehashing right-wing talking points and vilifying liberals, though. Again, I support the Assemblyman's efforts to inform the public of his stance and why he's picking it. I just don't find his arguments particularly original or compelling. |
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