Capriciousness of death penalty foes
It must be nice to be George Will. So well-read. So witty. So erudite. So self-certain of his own correctness that he cannot see beyond the certitude of his own brilliantly-crafted opinions.
ILLINOIS Gov. George Ryan's commutation of the death sentences of all 167 inmates in Illinois prisons is another golden moment for liberals that underscores how many of their successes are tarnished by being explicitly, even exuberantly, anti-democratic.
Speaking at Northwestern University to a celebrating audience of opponents of capital punishment, Ryan, two days from leaving office under a cloud of scandal and the threat of indictment, said of capital punishment: "The Legislature couldn't reform it. Lawmakers won't repeal it. But I will not stand for it." Translation: The chief executive vowed to not carry out the consensus of the people, as carefully codified by their elected representatives, in conformity with U.S. Supreme Court standards.
Of course, the fact that the system may in fact be horribly flawed and in need of someone with the moral courage to say "Enough" seems to escaped our Noble Defender of All That is Good and Holy.
Whether or not you agree with former Gov. Ryan, it is difficult to make a convincing argument that the system for assessing and enforcing the death penalty is fair and even-handed. The reality is that it is not, which is exactly what Ryan's review of Death Row cases revealed. The question becomes, then, how to fix the system? Or are Conservatives satisfied with a system that occasionally sacrifices an innocent person "for the Greater Good"?
Will makes what he obviously feels is a compelling argument for the efficacy of the system, and why it should essentially be left as is:
Conservatives, especially, should remember that capital punishment is a government program, so skepticism is warranted. But liberals who say capital punishment is intolerable, given the elusiveness of certainty, should remember three things:
First, certainty often is not elusive. It was not regarding the guilt of the man and woman who, wanting a child, stabbed to death a pregnant Illinois woman, used scissors to carve from her the near-term fetus (the child lived), and killed two of her other three children.
Second, certainty cuts both ways. DNA evidence, which has helped exonerate some death row inmates, can also provide unassailable proof of guilt.
Third, in the last 25 years, 13 men have been released from Illinois' death row -- three of them in 1999 -- as a result of exonerating evidence. This might seem to justify the inference that, nationally, some innocent persons have been executed. But none of the many groups opposed to capital punishment provides the name of any such a person.
Perhaps the reason that so few people have been exonerated is that states are loath to revisit procedural issues in capital murder cases. After all, if the person in question were not guilty of murder, he wouldn't have been given the death penalty now, would he? What drives this attitude is the fear that the emperor might be exposed as having no clothes. What if police and prosecutors were corrupt? What if political considerations were the driving factors in death penalty prosecutions? Once someone is on death row, the prevailing attitude is to consider it a closed case. They're on death row, so of course they must be guilty. If a person in that situation is legitimately innocent and unfortunate enough to be indigent, their prospects are exceedingly poor.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. My issue is not the moral correctness of the death penalty. My issue is with the system that implements it. I'm sorry, but executing the occasional innocent is not an acceptable price to pay for the safety of society as a whole. Unfortunately, many Conservatives seem to think the occasional sacrifice of an innocent man is a tolerable price to pay.
What makes Will's argument even less credible is his obvious, almost palpable disdain for Gov. Ryan. Not content to belabor his support for the current system, Will can't seem to resist a gratuitous kick at Gov. Ryan's tenure.
Ryan will be remembered as one of Illinois' worst governors, which is saying something. He will be so remembered, if not for his administration's improprieties, then for his disregard of democratic values, and his cavalier laceration of the unhealable wounds of those who mourn the victims of the killers the state of Illinois condemned.
Frankly, I could doctor that last paragraph a bit, and restate it to describe Will's career as a pundit. Really, though, why would I both to expend that kind of energy on someone so convinced of his own intellectual and moral superiority?
