[Vision2020] Death Penalty and US Criminal Justice System

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

I'm preparing a paper on Muslims in Medieval India for a conference this weekend in Spokane, but I will be doing two radio commentary for KRFP for this coming week and the next.  

The first will be on the death penalty and the 178 innocents who have been found on America's death rows.  The second will be entitled "America's Abu Ghraib" on the horrible conditions in our prisons.

Let me repeat that I really miss Phil Nisbet on this list.  He would have come up with reasoned arguments for the death penalty instead of mish mash of incoherent statements from our current right wingers. Their attempts have been really pathetic.

Just a few comments before I get back to my paper:

1. The death penalty does not deter violent crime.  There is actually less violent crime in states without the death penalty than those with it.  Violent crime rates in other countries without the death penalty are very low.

2.  Most people appear to want the death penalty for reasons of vengeance, but psychological studies of victims' families have demonstrated that their feelings for revenge have not been assuaged.

3.  If one of my loved ones were brutally murdered, I would demand life imprisonment (far less expensive) so that I could visit the murderer on a regular basis and remind him of his dirty deed.  That would be a far better and moral punishment than execution.  I agree with Gandhi that one can find a conscience deep down in just about every human being.  (His belief that the British had conscience was one of many reasons he thought that nonviolent action would win in the end.) And once a conscience is discovered it can scold a person far more effectively than any external punishment.

4.  The difference between a person on death row and a fetus up to 25 weeks is that our moral, legal, and religious tradition dictates that the former is a person with a serious moral right to life and the latter is not a legal person.  For those who missed the debate on abortion, see the Vision2020 archives or read my article at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/abortion.htm.

5.  The post about the failed California law about giving fetuses anesthesia failed to acknowledge a series of studies going back many years showing that fetuses without the explosive brain development after 25 weeks do not feel pain.  It is actually safer for maternal and fetal health not to use anesthesia for fetal operations.

By the way, the main discovery about Muslims in India is that Islam was not spread by the sword there or in Malaysia or Indonesia.

Nick Gier