“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime…nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb… nor be deprived of life… without due process of law…”

5^th Amendment to the United States Constitution  

So long quiescent, almost somnolent, the issue of the death penalty has again stepped into the theater of the national debate, enter Stage Left.

The state of New Jersey has abolished the death penalty, and the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has agreed to hear a case involving the issue of whether or not lethal injection may be “cruel and unusual punishment” under the terms of the Eighth Amendment.

Of course, accompanying this, we now hear – yet again – all the usual suspects raising all the usual objections to the death penalty itself.

First, as to the decision in New Jersey, that state is perfectly within the scope of its powers under federalism to decide for itself to ban the death penalty for crimes over which it has jurisdiction. So we can set that aside.

As to the case before SCOTUS, it seems to me that the issue is easily resolved. All they have to do is require that the method of anaesthetization used in lethal injection be the same used in major surgery, and the discussion’s over. The appellants have claimed that the current method merely immobilizes the Guest Of Honor, masking his real underlying agony as he’s put down. Of course, the current method is the same used by doctors performing major surgery on paying patients, but let’s cut those Lefties some slack and make the requirement mandatory. In the interest of uniformity. It will be pretty hard for them to make this absurd claim again in the future, because many people have had major surgery, and don’t wake up telling tales of torture under the knife while they’ve been sliced and diced like Thanksgiving turkeys, and so hopefully common sense will ultimately prevail (I hope I don’t sound too naïve there). And of course, there’s the alternative with results so instantaneous that the human nervous system has no chance to react: the guillotine. My personal favorite. Great results in accord with the Eighth Amendment; high entertainment value.

However that issue’s resolved at SCOTUS, we can expect to see those “usual suspects’” usual anti-capital punishment arguments resurface, so let’s review a few of them.

An innocent person might be executed by mistake:  There’s no evidence this has actually happened in the modern era, and it is less likely to happen as we move forward. But I have to concede it is a possibility. Are we supposed to suspend executions until the judicial system is perfect? Nothing created my man is perfect, so we’d be de facto permanently banning executions. Further, there’s a cost in lives to all social policies. Those who claim such concern over the possibility of an innocent person being executed can never answer one question I invariably ask: if that one innocent life is so important that it justifies abandoning our entire policy on the death penalty, are you willing to lower the freeway speed limits to 15 miles per hour? That would save tens of thousands of innocent lives annually. Because that is the cost we as a society have deemed acceptable for the social policy of high-speed transportation on our national highway system.

Further, should we also stop putting people in prison because of the theoretical “innocent” man? Where do we draw the line?

The system is racist and stacked against minorities:  Easy to claim, hard to prove. The system is “stacked” FOR people with the money to afford talented counsel, and some minority groups consist of large segments of folks without those resources. Money does buy better things in life, and that’s just a fact of life. OJ Simpson’s Black, and he got away with stone-cold double homicide. Further, some minorities are responsible for more violent crimes than are proportional to their demographic, and that’s just a fact, too. So, obviously, they’ll also be disproportionally represented as criminal defendants.

If the system’s “stacked” at all, it’s stacked against poor people… who, incidentally, commit the majority of violent crimes. But the Constitution doesn’t guarantee anything other than “due process”, and rich people can simply afford better help. As is the case in all aspects of life; that’s why everyone wants to be rich!

The death penalty is unconstitutionally cruel or unusual punishment:  As we can see in the quote from the Fifth Amendment, the death penalty is perfectly constitutional as long as due process is afforded the defendant.

It’s also interesting to me that almost invariably the same folks who so worry about convicted murderers being executed don’t even blink at the idea of millions of true innocents being slaughtered under the umbrella of abortion on demand. The irony and hypocrisy totally escapes them.

They’re also oblivious to the victims, past and potential future, that fall prey to these heinous creatures. Liberalism truly does require that one be willing to blind himself to any facts or ideas that cast the dogma into doubt.