INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-death-penalty-reprise-20150106-story.html
Richard E. Vatz
|
Maryland should reinstate the death penalty
By Scott Shellenberger and Richard E. Vatz
Baltimore County state's attorney: Reinstate
the death penalty.
January 6, 2015
Larry
Hogan won the Maryland governorship by conceding that some social issues were
settled — such as gay marriage, gun control and abortion — but saying that the
state had gone too far on other matters such as taxation and spending.
No
controversy better exemplifies this overcorrection than the elimination of
capital punishment from Maryland's criminal justice system.
The death
penalty should be reinstated in Maryland. Here's why:
1. If,
God forbid, an egregious murderer were to target children, such as was done in
the Pakistani city of Peshawar in mid-December, wherein over 100 children were
murdered by a half dozen Taliban, Maryland must not have only life imprisonment
at its disposal. The death penalty must be available for the most unspeakable
crimes wherein children or other innocents are targeted.
2. Public
opinion is somewhat unstable, but mostly in support of judicious use of
execution for monstrous crimes or, as we like to call them, the worst of the
worst.
Following
the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh, which killed 168 people and
injured hundreds more, polling support for state-imposed executions reached
over 80 percent, for example.
3. The
number of law enforcement officers shot in the line of duty increased by 50
percent in 2014. The leading method of those shootings was ambush-style
attacks. The death penalty should be an option for those prosecutors who wish
to seek it when an officer is killed.
4. A
state's availability of capital punishment, despite arguments to the contrary,
provides a deterrent against capital crime. Singapore uses it consistently, and
Britain has abolished it, which has led to decreases and increases in capital
crime respectively. Accused murderers rarely want the death penalty if
convicted.
5. Lifers
without parole are free to murder with virtual impunity. This puts our
correctional officers at risk and all others who work and live in our prisons.
They kill people in prison and have the ability to order assaults and murders
as well. The late Baltimore Sun columnist Gregory Kane used to write about
correctional officers who were on "inmate hit lists." Do we wish to
give the "go-head" to such felons to assassinate and terrorize
witnesses and others at will?
6. The
most irrelevant issue opposing the death penalty is the cost. First, it is
impossible to assess the costs over time of keeping capital criminals alive and
contrasting it to maintaining the possibility of execution, and second, it is
as relatively unimportant as assessing the cost of drone strikes, a military
strategy critical to stopping or slowing down terrorist groups bent on
destroying the United States.
7. The
argument that no anti-crime strategy is worth the risk of the state's killing
an innocent man is bogus. Moses Maimonides' dictum that "It is better and
more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single
innocent one to death" ignores the fact that the freed guilty person may
kill thousands more. Moreover, raising the standard of proof for conviction in
capital cases eliminates even this invalid argument. With the advent of DNA
analysis and other technological advances in crime fighting, the chances of
executing an innocent person are near zero.
There is
no major ideological divide in Maryland concerning whether the death penalty
ought to at least be available for use against mass murderers, murderers of
children or murderers of law enforcement.
Unfortunately,
in Maryland, one day we will wake up to the news that a person has committed
another unspeakable crime against his fellow man — maybe one similar to
Newtown. What do we tell our fellow citizens when the death penalty is not even
available as an option for the killing of 20 school children? What do we tell
the rest of the country?
The death
penalty within a fair court system is not a matter of vengeance; it is a matter
of justice. Justice must exist for the killer, his victim and our community.
When there is justice, much is achieved.
Don't
take the threat of capital punishment out of the hands of prosecutors who wish
to protect the citizens of Maryland.
Restore
the possibility of capital punishment in Maryland.
Scott
Shellenberger is Baltimore County state's attorney and author of the Maryland
Commission on Capital Punishment Minority Report; his email is statesattorney@baltimorecountymd.gov.
Richard E. Vatz is professor at Towson University and author of "The Only
Authentic Book of Persuasion" (Kendall Hunt, 2013); his email is rvatz@towson.edu.
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