Vote Yes for Justice

I am voting (actually, already have voted absentee) YES on the death penalty referendum advisory question.
I will cede you that the referendum is ill-worded and I’d reserve the oppose a specific statute if I felt it wasn’t right. But on the general question of whether we should have the death penalty in Wisconsin for first degree intentional homicide, I answer yes.
In introduction to criminal law we’re taught that there are four purposes to criminal punishment:
-Rehabilitation.
-Incapacitation.
-Deterrence.
-Retribution.

Proponents of the death penalty base their claims principally on the final two points.

Professor John McAdams of Marquette’s political science department is the deterrence guru in Wisconsin. His essay for WPRI cites to a multitude of recent academic-economic studies showing a strong deterrent effect for the death penalty.

Admittedly, though, the social science on this question is not conclusive. While it does lean towards deterrence, in my opinion, there are of course studies on the other side. Moreover, there are certain philisophical reasons (avoiding consequentialism, utilitiarianism/deontology) that I am not totally familiar with suggesting against staking deterrence as the principal pro-claim.

I, rather, am basically a retributivist. I believe, and I think the majority of Wisconsinites and Americans believe, that the death penalty is a morally appropriate punishment for those who commit the most vicious murders [let me enter a moral culpability caveat here that I'm not calling for obligatory capital punishment for every murderer, and that each case is unique and a jury (and appeals), should make the call whether DP is the most appropriate punishment].

There are three retributivist notions underlying this argument.

The first is the victim. A first degree intentional homicide murderer takes the life or lives of wonderful, unique, innocent victims. An appropriate way to honor the value of their life is the death penalty.

The second is the offender. Each of us is an independent moral actor with free will. Every day we make choices and we face the consequences of those choices. Someone who makes the choice to murder needs the “just desserts” of his act, namely the death penalty. The second twist on this is “moral suicide,” that when the offender takes a life, by that act he forfeits his own right to life.

The third is the community. On Law and Order, it’s The People vs. Criminal X. That’s because all of us, The People, are harmed by a criminal act (as opposed to a civil suit, which is two parties against one another). The debt theory of punishment holds that when you commit a crime, you incur a debt to society. When you commit a robbery, we look at the circumstances and designate a certain number of years as adequate punishment for that crime. When it comes to first degree intentional homicide, the debt incurred is great, and capital punishment is the equal way to pay it off.

Let me close by suggesting you should all read C.S. Lewis’ essay “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment.”

P.S. This today via Yahoo News:

With the 2006 mid-term elections just around the corner, Nielsen Monitor-Plus, the advertising intelligence service of Nielsen Media Research, today reported on recent political advertising activity for local campaigns nationwide. In the U.S., a total of 942,900 local television spots ran during an eleven week period (August 1-October 15), up by 31% from a comparable time period during the 2002 mid-term elections. Over 95% of all measured political advertising is on local television.

The number three biggest buyer of spots among all US House candidates nationwide? John Gard for US Congress.

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