Not much time for blogging today...so I'll just point out a couple of posts from Sarai at Anglofille.
First, she sheds no tears for Tookie, then dismisses European sneers at the US penal system by illustrating some of the ridiculously low sentences handed down in the UK for killing your wife or girlfriend.
I do want to state that I don't support the death penalty. I'm not willing to accept the death's of innocents or the fiscal implications of numerous appeals in exchange for the unproven deterrent value of capital punishment. I don't like the State turning me into a killer when they execute on my behalf. But there are people on death row whom I think the world would be better off without, I can't say I was too worked up over Tookie Williams.
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2 comments:
I tend to be against the death penalty in principle (at any rate I don't want it routinely applied) but for it in specific cases. Certainly Tookie was not a good case for death-penalty abolition. Maybe Tae Hui's husband didn't deserve to be executed (though maybe he did) but he certainly deserved more than the derisory sentence he got. Also I think the ban on death penalties by international courts has a hugely deletirious effect - because the US wanted Saddam dead (understandably) he had to be tried by an Iraqi court, which seems to be totally incapable of doing it right. Admittedly the trial of Milosevic at the Hague is also a travesty; possibly because Milosevic is a gangster but the Yugoslav army didn't actually commit any war crimes.
I'm vehemently anti-death penalty (it'd be foolish to pretend otherwise), but to me it's a fairly cut and dried argument - either you believe vengeance is within the remit of the state, or you don't.
But setting that aside: we give people the same sentence for murder whether the victim was good or evil. Application of the death penalty should follow the same logic.
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