pro life vs capital punishment
A couple of years ago I was having a conversation with a family friend about my views on abortion. I told her that I couldn’t understand why most liberals are against the death penalty, but are for abortion. To me it seemed like a contradiction. She pointed out that being against abortion but being for the death penalty was a contradiction too. It actually stumped me for awhile. Later, I thought of what I wish I had said.
To abort a baby is to murder a person who hasn’t even been given a chance to grow, to make decisions, to decide what kind of person they want to be. But someone who has been given the death penalty has had the chance to make those choices.
Unfortunately they made the decision to break the law, usually in a very horrible way that took someone else’s life. Our laws include the death penalty. If someone in this country murders another person, they know a possible consequence of that action is to be put to death themselves. I know our legal system isn’t perfect and there are times an innocent person is wrongly convicted. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but here’s one solution I would agree to, if just to save the babies. Abolish both practices.
Don’t get me wrong, if there’s someone who has raped and murdered a child, I wouldn’t hesitate to flip that switch myself. But, if it meant stopping an abortion and letting that person live, I could get on board with that.
Dudley Sharp said,
August 18, 2008 at 11:59 am
This is a non dilemma.
The objection to abortion is that it is the killing of a total innocent.
Executing a murderer is a legal sanction for commiting a murder.
Very different.
Furthermore, you can, rightly, agrue that the death penalty is pro life.
The Death Penalty: More Protection for Innocents
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info below
Often, the death penalty dialogue gravitates to the subject of innocents at risk of execution. Seldom is a more common problem reviewed. That is, how innocents are more at risk without the death penalty.
To state the blatantly clear, living murderers, in prison, after release or escape, are much more likely to harm and murder, again, than are executed murderers.
Although an obvious truism, it is surprising how often folks overlook the enhanced incapacitation benefits of the death penalty over incarceration.
No knowledgeable and honest party questions that the death penalty has the most extensive due process protections in US criminal law.
Therefore, actual innocents are more likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment and more likely to die in prison serving under that sentence, that it is that an actual innocent will be executed.
That is. logically, conclusive.
16 recent studies, inclusive of their defenses, find for death penalty deterrence.
A surprise? No.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Some believe that all studies with contrary findings negate those 16 studies. They don’t. Studies which don’t find for deterrence don’t say no one is deterred, but that they couldn’t measure those deterred.
What prospect of a negative outcome doesn’t deter some? There isn’t one . . . although committed anti death penalty folk may say the death penalty is the only one.
However, the premier anti death penalty scholar accepts it as a given that the death penalty is a deterrent, but does not believe it to be a greater deterrent than a life sentence. Yet, the evidence is compelling and un refuted that death is feared more than life.
Some death penalty opponents argue against death penalty deterrence, stating that it’s a harsher penalty to be locked up without any possibility of getting out.
Reality paints a very different picture.
What percentage of capital murderers seek a plea bargain to a death sentence? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of convicted capital murderers argue for execution in the penalty phase of their capital trial? Zero or close to it. They prefer long term imprisonment.
What percentage of death row inmates waive their appeals and speed up the execution process? Nearly zero. They prefer long term imprisonment.
This is not, even remotely, in dispute.
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life.
Furthermore, history tells us that lifers have many ways to get out: Pardon, commutation, escape, clerical error, change in the law, etc.
In choosing to end the death penalty, or in choosing not implement it, some have chosen to spare murderers at the cost of sacrificing more innocent lives.
Furthermore, possibly we have sentenced 20-25 actually innocent people to death since 1973, or 0.3% of those so sentenced. Those have all been released upon post conviction review. The anti death penalty claims, that the numbers are significantly higher, are a fraud, easily discoverable by fact checking.
6 inmates have been released from death row because of DNA evidence. An additional 9 were released from prison, because of DNA exclusion, who had previously been sentenced to death.
The innocents deception of death penalty opponents has been getting exposure for many years. Even the behemoth of anti death penalty newspapers, The New York Times, has recognized that deception.
To be sure, 30 or 40 categorically innocent people have been released from death row . . . (1) This when death penalty opponents were claiming the release of 119 “innocents” from death row. Death penalty opponents never required actual innocence in order for cases to be added to their “exonerated” or “innocents” list. They simply invented their own definitions for exonerated and innocent and deceptively shoe horned large numbers of inmates into those definitions – something easily discovered with fact checking.
There is no proof of an innocent executed in the US, at least since 1900.
If we accept that the best predictor of future performance is past performance, we can reasonable conclude that the DNA cases will be excluded prior to trial, and that for the next 8000 death sentences, that we will experience a 99.8% accuracy rate in actual guilt convictions. This improved accuracy rate does not include the many additional safeguards that have been added to the system, over and above DNA testing.
Of all the government programs in the world, that put innocents at risk, is there one with a safer record and with greater protections than the US death penalty?
Unlikely.
Full report -All Innocence Issues: The Death Penalty, upon request.
Full report – The Death Penalty as a Deterrent, upon request
(1) The Death of Innocents: A Reasonable Doubt,
New York Times Book Review, p 29, 1/23/05, Adam Liptak,
national legal correspondent for The NY Times
copyright 2007-2008, Dudley Sharp
Permission for distribution of this document, in whole or in part, is approved with proper attribution.
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas
Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS, VOA and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O’Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.
A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.
Callie said,
August 20, 2008 at 1:30 pm
That is the longest comment ever left on my blog. Thank you for taking the time to read my post and make such an informative comment.
Vegas Quixote said,
September 8, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Mr. Sharp’s boilerplate appeal for state-sponsored killing is based on many questionable assumptions. The Death Penalty is an archaic practice based on revenge rather than justice.
Callie said,
September 9, 2008 at 12:05 am
Dear Vegas, Thank you for reading my blog and making a comment. While I don’t necessarily agree with your opinion, I respect your right to disagree with Mr. Sharp, and even me. Which is why I posted your comment. After all, freedom of speech is part of what makes this country great!
Dudley Sharp said,
September 18, 2008 at 3:29 am
The Death Penalty: Neither Hatred nor Revenge
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info below
Death penalty opponents say that the death penalty has a foundation in hatred and revenge. Such is a false claim.
A death sentence requires pre existing statutes, trial and appeals, considerations of guilt and due process, to name but a few. Revenge requires none of these and, in fact, does not even require guilt or a crime.
The criminal justice system goes out of its way to take hatred and revenge out of the process. That is why we have a system of pre existing laws and legal procedures that offer extreme protections to defendants and those convicted and which limit punishments and prosecutions to specific crimes.
It is also why those directly affected by the murder are not allowed to be fact finders in the case.
The reality is that the pre trial, trial. appellate and executive clemency/commutation processes , often, offer greater time, money and human resources to capital cases than they do to other cases, meaning that the facts tell us that defendants and convicted murderers, subject to the death penalty, receive greater care and concern than those not facing the death penalty – the opposite of a system marked by vengeance.
Calling executions a product of hatred and revenge is simply a way in which some death penalty opponents attempt to establish a sense of moral superiority. It can also be a transparent insult which results in additional hurt to those victim survivors who have already suffered so much and who believe that execution is the appropriate punishment for those who murdered their loved one(s).
Far from moral superiority, those who call capital punishment an expression of hatred and revenge are often exhibiting their contempt for those who believe differently than they do.
The pro death penalty position is based upon those who find that punishment just and appropriate under specific circumstances.
Those opposed to execution cannot prove a foundation of hatred and revenge for the death penalty any more than they can for any other punishment sought within a system such as that observed within the US – unless such opponents find all punishments a product of hatred and revenge – an unreasonable, unfounded position
Far from hatred and revenge, the death penalty represents our greatest condemnation for a crime of unequaled horror and consequence. Lesser punishments may suffice under some circumstances. A death sentence for certain heinous crimes is given in those special circumstances when a jury finds such is more just than a lesser sentence.
Less justice is not what we need.
A thorough review of the criminal justice system will often beg this question: Why have we chosen to be so generous to murderers and so contemptuous of the human rights and suffering of the victims and future victims?
The punishment of death is, in no way, a balancing between harm and punishment, because the victim did not deserve or earn their punishment, whereas the murderer has earned their own, deserved punishment by the free will action of violating societies laws and an individuals life and, thereby, voluntarily subjecting themselves to that jurisdictions judgment.
copyright 2001-2008 Dudley Sharp
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com, 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas
Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS , VOA and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O’Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.
A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.
Vegas Quixote said,
October 24, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Mr. Sharp’s suggestion that the justice system is blind, unemotional, and without race or class bias indicates he has never spent much time working or critically studying the justice system.
Dudley Sharp said,
October 28, 2008 at 1:52 am
VQ, it is not productive for you to make false claims.
I have never suggested “that the justice system is blind, unemotional, and without race or class bias.”
Nor can you find where I have.
Stop making up false claims and stick to facts.
Vegas Quixote said,
October 30, 2008 at 12:10 am
I’m glad we can agree that the US justice system has race and class bias. I thought you were suggesting that the system was fair when you sketched out how the US system, or your “Texas justice” system, allegedly works.
Although you have been on O’Reilly, which must make you a real expert, I seriously question that you know how the justice system works behind the scenes.
Now will you agree that the most heinous criminals and the people who have created more damage to US society have not been given the Death Penalty?
Dudley Sharp said,
November 6, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Being on a show doesn’t make anyone an expert. It makes you a person on a show. What makes an expert is knowlegde on a subject.
vegasquixote said,
January 21, 2009 at 1:18 am
Mr. Dudley Sharp are you for or against abortion? It looks to me that you gave donations to “Republicans for Choice” in 2000 and 2002.
Dudley Sharp said,
January 26, 2009 at 4:06 pm
To: Dahn Shaulis, aka Vegas Quixote or vegasquixote or theamericaninjusticesystem
It is unfortunate that you continuously follow me around the web to distribute dishonest and unconstructive posts. Certainly, one would hope, you can do better.
BTW, nope never made such a contribution.
Based upon your prior claims, against me, around the web, you can presume that your “accusations” against me are false and thus, not pollute the blogs with your personal attacks.
Callie said,
January 27, 2009 at 1:41 am
Dear Vegas,
I’ve left your comments on my blog up to this point. While I appreciate the traffic this debate may bring, I will not allow this to be a forum for you to slander another reader. I don’t know why you have a problem with Mr. Sharp, but any other comments made about him in a derogatory manner will be deleted.
Sincerely,
Callie