Too costly to kill
It would be odd, yet quintessentially American, if the death penalty in the United States faded away for cost reasons rather than moral.
The New York Times reports today that increasing numbers of judges are refusing to let prosecutors seek the death penalty unless they are facing a real defense, meaning one with good (which tends to mean well-paid) lawyers and enough money to hire private investigators, expert witnesses, and pay laboratory fees. An even playing field, so to speak, although an obviously guilty man is still likely to become a convicted guilty man even if he does have a vigorous defense. It's the many cases where guilt isn't a slam-dunk conclusion, perhaps because of police misconduct, that has judges worried.
Death is different. It can't be undone like a life sentence can if new evidence is found. But more to the point, not every murderer is sentenced to death. Many are not, and not only in states like Michigan that never had the death penalty. Americans have always been of two minds about the death penalty, and have never been willing to mindlessly apply it to all convicted murderers. I remember a lawyer telling me once that the worst experience of his professional life was trying to persuade a Pennsylvania jury not to sentence his client to death. It didn't, but the pressure on him was enormous. You can't have a bad day.
Death is also costly. Legal costs go up--or should go up--exponentially when a death sentence is a possibility. It is far cheaper for a state to put someone in prison for life than to execute them. Strange but true.
So with the Supreme Court having put in effect a de facto moratorium on executions while it deliberates whether the risk of intense pain is too much of a risk in lethal injections, and other judges demanding fairness in death trials, we could be heading for a quiet end to executions in America. Europe, which had enough of killing in World War II, is way ahead of us in this regard.
I mentioned Michigan earlier because a jury in my hometown of Holland, Michigan, convicted four men last week 28 years after they raped and murdered Janet Chandler, a Hope College student. Two other defendants, including Laurie Swank of Nescopeck, Pa., copped pleas earlier. The four convicted last week will spend the rest of their lives in prison. Since they couldn't be sentenced to death, there won't be multiple and costly appeal hearings for the next 20 years.
They'll just rot away quietly behind the walls of the state penitentiary at Jackson. Which is as it should be.