Death Penalty is fatally flawed, by Hank Kalen, Cranbury Press
Published on Saturday, September 16, 2006 by The Cranbury Press (New Jersey)
Death Penalty is Fatally Flawed
by Hank Kalet
“It is not morally acceptable for a civilized society to kill."
— Former state Attorney General Robert Del Tufo (quoted in The Asbury Park Press)
The debate over the death penalty is a debate over competing narratives.
On the one hand, you have many victims' families demanding retribution, demanding a closure they say can only come from knowing that the murderer's life has been snuffed out.
On the other hand, you have another group of victims' families who question the death penalty, saying the endless but necessary appeals only prolong the agony, keeping the emotional wounds fresh and prolonging their pain.
You have a growing split in the law enforcement and prosecutorial communities, with the majority believing the death penalty an appropriate punishment and a growing minority viewing it as an affront to civilized society.
And you have the story of men like Juan Roberto Melendez Colon. The Puerto Rico native, who testified Wednesday before the state Death Penalty Study Commission in Trenton, had been wrongly convicted in Florida of killing a cosmetology school owner and spent 18 years on death row.
The commission was created in January as part of a moratorium on the death penalty in the state to study capital punishment. It is supposed to review the cost of implementing the death penalty, whether it is — or can be — applied fairly, whether it is a deterrent to crime and if it should be abolished.
The commission has been holding hearings, the latest of which was Wednesday, during which advocates and opponents have placed their cards on the table.
The testimony offered a fairly broad cross-section of views, with supporters like Marilyn Flax, whose husband's killer, John Martini, is on death row, stating her support for capital punishment and JoAnne Barlieb, whose mother was killed while working in a convenience store, asking that the death penalty be replaced with a life sentence without the option of parole.
As compelling as these stories are and as effectively as they help underscore the issues involved, I'm doubtful that they will bridge the gap of belief.
As I said, we are witnessing a debate of competing narratives. And how we respond to the narratives depends upon the emotional and intellectual baggage we bring to them.
I am reminded of the 1988 presidential debates. The Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis was asked whether, had his wife been raped and killed, he would favor an "irrevocable death penalty" for the killer. His response, which doomed his fading candidacy, was to coolly explain his opposition to capital punishment.
His apparent lack of emotion left him open to accusations that he was not suitably sympathetic to the victims of crime and that he viewed the issue on a theoretical plane.
I mention this because I think the question and his answer — and the public response to both — offer us a way to view what is happening in Trenton.
Testimony from crime victims and the falsely accused is useful and necessary, but only to remind the people who will have to make the decision on the future of the death penalty that there is a human component to this debate. That was what Mr. Dukakis forgot in answering the debate question 18 years ago.
But a decision on the death penalty will have to consider far more than the emotional issues. The panel reviewing capital punishment will have to grapple with the volume of research that seems to indicate that it is not the deterrent supporters believe it is and the equally voluminous research that seems to indicate racial and class biases in its application.
More importantly, it will have to address the question of fallibility, of how sure we need to be that the people we are sending to death are guilty of the crime for which they have been sentenced — which segues into the question of whether capital punishment is moral or ethical in the first place.
I have long opposed the death penalty on moral and ethical grounds. On what ethical grounds can we send a man to death if there is even the slightest of chances that he was not guilty? And how can we condemn a man or woman for taking a life and then grant the state the right to take one as retribution?
Capital punishment is essentially nothing more than premeditated murder, a revenge killing dressed up as an act of justice.
We may think it will make us safer or that it will lend closure, but it just makes all of us complicit in state-sanctioned murder.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. He can be reached via e-mail at hkalet@papcub.com. His blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com.
Copyright © 2006 The Cranbury Press
###
Death Penalty is Fatally Flawed
by Hank Kalet
“It is not morally acceptable for a civilized society to kill."
— Former state Attorney General Robert Del Tufo (quoted in The Asbury Park Press)
The debate over the death penalty is a debate over competing narratives.
On the one hand, you have many victims' families demanding retribution, demanding a closure they say can only come from knowing that the murderer's life has been snuffed out.
On the other hand, you have another group of victims' families who question the death penalty, saying the endless but necessary appeals only prolong the agony, keeping the emotional wounds fresh and prolonging their pain.
You have a growing split in the law enforcement and prosecutorial communities, with the majority believing the death penalty an appropriate punishment and a growing minority viewing it as an affront to civilized society.
And you have the story of men like Juan Roberto Melendez Colon. The Puerto Rico native, who testified Wednesday before the state Death Penalty Study Commission in Trenton, had been wrongly convicted in Florida of killing a cosmetology school owner and spent 18 years on death row.
The commission was created in January as part of a moratorium on the death penalty in the state to study capital punishment. It is supposed to review the cost of implementing the death penalty, whether it is — or can be — applied fairly, whether it is a deterrent to crime and if it should be abolished.
The commission has been holding hearings, the latest of which was Wednesday, during which advocates and opponents have placed their cards on the table.
The testimony offered a fairly broad cross-section of views, with supporters like Marilyn Flax, whose husband's killer, John Martini, is on death row, stating her support for capital punishment and JoAnne Barlieb, whose mother was killed while working in a convenience store, asking that the death penalty be replaced with a life sentence without the option of parole.
As compelling as these stories are and as effectively as they help underscore the issues involved, I'm doubtful that they will bridge the gap of belief.
As I said, we are witnessing a debate of competing narratives. And how we respond to the narratives depends upon the emotional and intellectual baggage we bring to them.
I am reminded of the 1988 presidential debates. The Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis was asked whether, had his wife been raped and killed, he would favor an "irrevocable death penalty" for the killer. His response, which doomed his fading candidacy, was to coolly explain his opposition to capital punishment.
His apparent lack of emotion left him open to accusations that he was not suitably sympathetic to the victims of crime and that he viewed the issue on a theoretical plane.
I mention this because I think the question and his answer — and the public response to both — offer us a way to view what is happening in Trenton.
Testimony from crime victims and the falsely accused is useful and necessary, but only to remind the people who will have to make the decision on the future of the death penalty that there is a human component to this debate. That was what Mr. Dukakis forgot in answering the debate question 18 years ago.
But a decision on the death penalty will have to consider far more than the emotional issues. The panel reviewing capital punishment will have to grapple with the volume of research that seems to indicate that it is not the deterrent supporters believe it is and the equally voluminous research that seems to indicate racial and class biases in its application.
More importantly, it will have to address the question of fallibility, of how sure we need to be that the people we are sending to death are guilty of the crime for which they have been sentenced — which segues into the question of whether capital punishment is moral or ethical in the first place.
I have long opposed the death penalty on moral and ethical grounds. On what ethical grounds can we send a man to death if there is even the slightest of chances that he was not guilty? And how can we condemn a man or woman for taking a life and then grant the state the right to take one as retribution?
Capital punishment is essentially nothing more than premeditated murder, a revenge killing dressed up as an act of justice.
We may think it will make us safer or that it will lend closure, but it just makes all of us complicit in state-sanctioned murder.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. He can be reached via e-mail at hkalet@papcub.com. His blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com.
Copyright © 2006 The Cranbury Press
###
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