How I Changed My Mind on the Death Penalty

Regarding the data the author shares:

• The percentage of death row inmates who are black, 41%, is almost the same as the percentage of convicted murderers overall who are black, which is 42%. When one puts things in the proper context--percentage of death row inmates vs. percentage of convicted murderers--things are about right. (unless the entire prosecution mechanism is biased against blacks, which is an entirely different question)
• He's on better ground when he points out that about 10% of people sentenced to death get exonerated--but that is a problem with the prosecution process again, not the death penalty.
• Pointing to other capital crimes from the Mosaic Law is something of a straw man, because the Church is bound by the New Testament completion of parts of that law.
• Regarding the early church's restraint towards capital punishment, Rome also had a huge number of crimes that they'd kill you for. I'd argue that it's a mismatch of human law vs. God's law, not a reason to ignore the Romans 13 fact that God gave the sword to the state.
• Regarding a notion that the modern church ought to follow a total creed of nonviolence, that seems contrary to the instructions John, Jesus, and others gave regarding soldiers--basically "don't pillage", not "don't ever wage war"--and I think it misses the reality that if Christians aren't willing to serve as soldiers/police/etc., that leaves all our neighbors defenseless. Plus, how does one serve as a police officer without the possibility of using lethal force against a dangerous perp who doesn't want to be aprehended?

Overall, my take is that the question is not whether we ought to have a death penalty or not, but rather whether our systems for prosecuting criminals of any degree are fair and effective, and whether the crimes for which that penalty can be imposed match reasonably with Biblical guidelines. I've personally seen way too many cases where prosecutors have been caught suppressing exculpatory evidence, and yet more that a lot of police departments don't really do a good job investigating crimes at all. Thankfully, however, we do have the penalty limited to things like aggravated murder, which I think is appropriate.

Regarding not doing a good job investigating, a 2017 Minnesota Star-Tribune investigation found that in a number of Minnesota cities, only about 20% of sexual assault allegations get a good basic investigation--no heroics here, just things like "was an investigator assigned?", "were potential witnesses interviewed?", and "was a follow-up interview of the accuser conducted?". Interestingly, while only 20% got a good basic investigation, 26% went to prosecutors--meaning 6% of those accused had to fund the investigation of the crime themselves.

So with some pretty serious crimes, we have a pattern of a complete failure to do decent investigations, while all the while we have a lot of people who could be doing investigations handing out speeding tickets instead. Priorities....

One way of establishing a prosecutorial bias against blacks, or perhaps just prosecutorial incompetence or malice in certain districts, would be to measure the rate at which black convictees are exonerated vs. others, or to measure the rate that convictees on one city or county (prosecution district) are exonerated vs. others. I believe just that sort of thing was involved when the then-governor of Illinois commuted all death penalties in the state to life in prison; a lot of accused people from Cook County (Chicago) were found to have had a lot of exculpatory evidence withheld, and even saw falsification of evidence.

A side note on that example is that if indeed the Governor found prosecutorial misconduct was rampant, the proper response is not to just reduce penalties, but to create real, implementable penalties and an enforcement system to detect things like withholding of exculpatory evidence, failure to conduct a decent investigation, and the like. But sadly, too many of us are worked up about the possibility of executing innocent people to the degree that they don't see that it is similarly unjust to incarcerate innocent people--and the latter arguably happens a lot more often.

Another relevant point of reference here is that when someone is accused, but the state does not do an adequate investigation, the defendant finds himself with a "Hobson's Choice" of exhausting his financial resources to avoid an unjust conviction, or accepting that unjust conviction and ending up being hard to employ. The end result is the same; financial disaster for the defendant, somewhat independently of whether the defendant has done anything wrong. Moreover, since most states allow recovery of funds spent on public defenders, it hits the poor just as certainly as it does the middle class and wealthy.

So with some pretty serious crimes, we have a pattern of a complete failure to do decent investigations, while all the while we have a lot of people who could be doing investigations handing out speeding tickets instead. Priorities....

It is not that simple. That is, the staffing priorities situation is not that simple. For one thing, you can't plop just any random traffic-duty officer into a detective role. You can't even do that with just any random experienced patrol officer.

For another piece, the assumption that traffic ticketing should be a lower priority is debatable. Traffic violations correlate to traffic fatalities, to some extent, especially when you factor in impaired driving and--in urban areas--pedestrian and bicycle fatalities. But, again, the relationship is complex. So... "debatable" is the right word.

On the death penalty, I can see both sides of that. Imperfections in the system don't argue directly that the death penalty itself is immoral. But they do argue that the way we're implementing it is immoral. Still, to me, that's in the 'we should debate it, but the conclusion is not obvious' category.

I lean toward "we demonstrate the sanctity of life by executing those who take it unlawfully." Then work on doing it fairly and justly. The argument that executing people is not pro-life doesn't hold up. We are talking about different ways to value life, and taking a life unlawfully is not the same thing as taking a life lawfully. Because, law! Which matters, biblically. There is killing and then there is murder. The two words exist because the life-taking is in two very different moral categories.

Aaron, I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. My son-in-law got a degree in forensic science, and the "opportunities" he was offered from Minnesota law enforcement agencies basically boiled down to "pay your way through police academy, hand out speeding tickets for a few years while you forget what you learned in college, and then maybe we'll consider letting you be a detective."

Then you've got the City of New London, Connecticut, which infamously won (sigh) a circuit court decision that actually allowed it to impose a maximum score on the police academy entry exam in 2008. It's exactly what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put in Sherlock Holmes' mouth about his contempt for Scotland Yard, really.

But again, always hiring people to hand out speeding tickets. Again, you show your priorities by your actions, and yes, I do happen to think that the harm done by sexual assault generally exceeds that of going 7 over the speed limit. I don't believe that ought to be a serious topic for debate.