The government can’t win the war on drugs; it doesn’t do a particularly good job of enforcing the laws governing the practices of our elected officials; and it regularly demonstrates a pathetic lack of wisdom by over-regulating the U.S. economy. There is no reason, therefore, to trust it to act wisely to put its own citizens to death as punishment for capital crimes.
Forget the whiny liberal pleas that the United States is the only industrialized nation that employs the death penalty. That stance has no logical argumentative value because the United States is also the most prosperous and advanced democratic experiment ever embarked upon, and to suggest that it should be more like socialistic European governments is ridiculous and without merit.
Similarly, the offensively condescending notion that it is uncivilized or immoral to have a government punish the criminal activities of its citizens with its own methods should be dismissed. It is the proper and necessary role of a government to restrain, punish and when possible seek restitution from those who are guilty of breaking society’s agreed-upon rules. That’s why we have prisons and revoke the voting and arm-bearing rights of convicted felons. The death penalty is only one step further.
But while that liberal reasoning is wrong, the opinion that holds the government institutionally unfit — by a combined lack of wisdom and competence — to execute convicts is quite justified, and the anti-death penalty position should be made on those grounds.
Juries should be trusted to carry out their duty of deciding the guilt or innocence of those being tried before them. Without our common sense of right, wrong and judgment we can have no real justice. But they cannot be trusted with the task of deciding whether to extinguish the life of another person.
The U.S. jury system is still the best in the world but leaves too much to be desired when concerning the official killing of societal members, even the most despicable of that group.
Does anyone really trust an institution that let O.J. Simpson off the hook for two brutal murders, despite damning DNA evidence, to make life-and-death decisions for the justice system? The very nature of the jury system requires the most incompetent, uninformed of our society to make decisions of guilt or innocence because only jurors who aren’t informed enough to have pre-existing opinions of a case are allowed to adjudicate that matter.
Not only are juries fallible, but often the defense counsel is inadequate, sloppy and under-funded. There seem to be too many underpaid, underskilled or underprepared attorneys fighting on the front line of capital cases, leaving too much appellate work for lawyers fighting the execution clock.
The U.S. justice system is generally adequate. I would not for an instant argue that we should be soft on crime — indeed there is a tendency by many to squirm out of making tough, long-lasting decisions on the penal system.But no one should fool themselves into believing that it is wise enough to utilize the death penalty.