Death penalty: valid yet targeted

[Lionel Mandrake]

This op-ed piece by David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew Grossman in today's LA Times sheds a lot of light on a murky issue.

No serious constitutional argument can be made against the death penalty. The endless campaigns to ban it cost taxpayers millions to defend.

On the September night that the state of Georgia put Troy Davis to death, a crowd of several hundred gathered at the Supreme Court in Washington to protest America's continued practice of capital punishment. But they were in the wrong place. The protesters should have assembled 600 miles southeast, in Atlanta. The Constitution does not empower the Supreme Court to proscribe capital punishment or to regulate it out of existence, and those who ignore that point have made it increasingly expensive and less effective.

Every legal argument against the death penalty begins with the 8th or 5th Amendment. The 8th bars "cruel and unusual punishments," and the 5th guarantees "due process of law" before a person can be "deprived of life, liberty or property." But there is no serious constitutional argument against the death penalty. The 5th Amendment itself recognizes the existence of "capital" crimes, and executions were common before and after the Constitution's framing. No framer ever suggested that the Constitution divested states of this part of their historical punishment power, nor has there been a constitutional amendment that does so.

Matters not addressed by the Constitution are left to the democratic process and, in the main, to the states. As in Europe and Canada, a solid majority of American citizens supports the death penalty, believing it to serve both as a deterrent and an appropriate societal response to particularly heinous crimes. Unlike in Europe and Canada, however, U.S. courts and political leaders have not overridden public opinion to end the practice.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rivkin-death-penalty-20111026,0,7425149.story

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Maybe no serious argument can be made constitutionally against the death penalty.

I oppose it on the grounds that it is strictly immoral. The state has no right to take anyone's life. No Right.

And there is no place for revenge in our judicial system. For that is what the death penalty really is: revenge. People who want criminals put to death are usually looking for that.

Killing people, no matter how heinous their crimes, is simply and plainly wrong. Our stance on this issue puts us in the same column as other countries who also support it. China is one.

Do we really want to be seen as barbaric?

The icing on the cake for me is the fact that Rivkin worked for Reagan and the senior Bush. No wonder he supports the death penalty.

[Lionel Mandrake]

4. I respect your argument based on morality,

although I disagree with it.

But I regret the fact that this issue, like so many others, has been politicised. The fact that one of the authors worked for Republican administrations is not a valid reason to dismiss their arguments.

[Puregonzo1188]

2. Wait, am I supposed to fail sorry for the state that we've made it harder for them to murder people?

Because I don't.

[Lionel Mandrake]

5. No.

But you might want to look up the definition of "murder". The law does not recognize all killing as murder.

[gratuitous]

3. Nitwits

Putting someone to death in a ritualized sacrifice isn't cruel? Granted, in our barbaric history, it's not all that unusual, but unless Messrs. Rivkin and Grossman are prepared to argue that any cruel punishment, if it isn't unusual, is constitutionally valid (in which case, I'd like to see some sort of documented proof of their humanity), then yes, the death penalty doesn't pass constitutional muster, especially as practiced in the United States.

[Lionel Mandrake]

6. Messrs. Rivkin and Grossman are not prepared

to argue that any cruel punishment, if it isn't unusual, is constitutionally valid. They have no need to make such a preposterous argument, so you needn't question their humanity. They are lawyers, after all. Read the op-ed piece for their actual arguments.

[gratuitous]

8. Well, if ritualized state murder isn't cruel

Then I don't know what would be. The state-issued death certificate for an executed person lists the cause of death as a homicide. And yes, if someone is arguing, as the authors clearly are (and just because you say they aren't doesn't make it so), that because the barbaric punishment of death isn't cruel because it wasn't historically unusual, then they've checked their humanity at the door.

[Lionel Mandrake]

9. Your argument is with various courts,

not with David Rivkin and Andrew Grossman, who merely point out that the death penalty is not unconstitutional.

A legal dictionary has this to say:

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the death penalty itself is not inherently cruel, but has described it as "an extreme sanction, suitable to the most extreme of crimes" (gregg v. georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S. Ct. 2909, 49 L. Ed. 2d 859 <1976>). Federal and state courts have upheld modern methods of carrying out the death penalty, such as shooting, hanging, electrocution, and lethal injection, as constitutional.

Read more: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Cruel+and+Unusual+Punishment

The methods of execution listed above are certainly less barbaric than some previous methods:

For most of recorded history, capital punishments were often deliberately painful. Severe historical penalties include the breaking wheel, boiling to death, flaying, disembowelment, crucifixion, impalement, crushing, stoning, execution by burning, dismemberment, sawing, scaphism, or necklacing.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,950826,00.html

[Taverner]

7. Then perhaps we need a constitutional AMMENDMENT banning it

[Lionel Mandrake]

10. That would be the appropriate remedy

if you believe that the death penalty should be abolished in this country.

It might be hard to ratify such an amendment if, as the authors claim, most US citizens favor the death penalty.

[Taverner]

11. Yes - this is true, but we do need to eliminate it. It is a barbaric practice.

I don't care what you did, I don't want to kill you.

Lock you up with your demons and everyone else's, sure.

But I will not kill anyone.