Unambiguous Prose

Dan Weintraub is the ace political reporter for the Sacramento Bee. This morning on his blog he asked the following question -

If giving a lethal injection to a murderer who bludgeoned an innocent girl to death, then raped and stabbed her lifeless body, is cruel and unsual punishment, can the death penalty be legal anywhere in America, for anything?

The absurdity of the court interpretations of the injunction against cruel and unusual punishment in the Morales case are manifold. But the broader question of how does society deal with a really heinous crime should not be lost. In the last few years I have become a lot less convinced that this form of punishment actually is appropriate. There are some crimes where the need for closure and societal retribution should be very strong. In this case and the Tookie Williams case it seems to me that the state had every right to take the life of the perpetrator. But because the way the thing is administered and because of all the expense of the process and because it may say something about our society, it may be time to think more carefully about how do we deal with people like this. In the Tookie Williams case there were a couple of clear facts - first, his crimes were violent and horrible. But there was also some pretty good evidence that during his time in prison Williams had provided some good. In the Morales case, the description of his senseless crime is contained in Dan's sentence. Yet, if each execution is to be preceeded by the odd mix of kooks and wailing advocates those who believe that society should be able to extract something from people like this should carefully consider an alternative that accomplishes the societal objective without the ritualistic nature of the current setting for capital punishment.

Dan Weintraub has an interesting mix of stories on his blog - it is one of my favorite on the web.