Few issues represent so profound a moral conundrum and elicit so visceral an emotional response as capital punishment.
Some view it as an appropriate exercise of the state's police powers and a method of criminal deterrence necessary to maintain public order. Others view it as an anachronistic, inequitable and inhumane mechanism of state-sanctioned murder.
No matter which of these views one identifies with, last week's U.S. Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of capital punishment couldn't have been more disappointing.
Last week, the Court rendered its highly anticipated decision on the constitutionality of Kentucky's use of lethal injection. This case presented the Court with the opportunity to resolve the death-penalty question. The justices failed to accomplish this.
The court produced a convoluted and disjointed decision that is in many ways reflective of the great complexity attendant to capital punishment. The justices held that lethal injection was constitutional, yet they disagreed as to what exactly merits a constitutional challenge to the death penalty.
The most striking development of this decision, however, isn't the immediate end to the moratorium on executions. Rather, the court's decision proved to be a turning point for its longest serving member - and it is within his concurring opinion that the depth of the agonizing moral questions inherent in this great debate are most discernible.
Justice John Paul Stevens was among the staunchest advocates of capital punishment when he first came to the court, supporting its reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. More than 30 years later, the sagacious Stevens has come to a different conclusion.
Stevens concurred in the court's judgment last week, citing the force of precedent. Yet within his concurrence, Stevens declared that he now believes capital punishment is unconstitutional and that the nation needs to reexamine the death penalty's legitimacy in American society.
What at first glance appears to be little more than rhetorical gymnastics is in actuality a poignant portrait of the complex and moral ambiguity of capital punishment.
I find myself mirroring Stevens' sentiment. In principle, I support capital punishment, especially for heinous crimes and violent crimes against children. I can't support in practice, however, a system so flawed.
The death penalty is carried out capriciously and disproportionately in this country. Minorities and the poor are more likely to receive the death penalty. Those whose victims were white are more likely to get the death penalty than those whose victims were not. From an economic standpoint, the death penalty is more expensive than life in prison. Moreover, 123 people on death row have been exonerated since 1973. And a University of Michigan study shows that while death row inmates represent less than 1 percent of the prison population, they account for 22 percent of those exonerated. How can we as a society tolerate the possibility that the state is killing people who are innocent?
I have never been the victim of a violent crime, and neither has anyone close to me. And I won't pretend to understand the anger, resentment and thirst for vengeance that victims' loved ones justifiably feel. But when we continue a practice that the rest of the western world has decried as barbaric and antiquated - a practice that places us in league with such exemplars of human rights as China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan - we must seriously question its validity. Capital punishment in practice, in this country, is unacceptable. It must be abandoned.
Joshua Fredrickson is a political science senior. His column appears Wednesdays.
