The Deaths That Save Lives

Controversial?

How long has the "killer gene" been allowed to survive in this country and how many innocent people have fell victim to senseless murder?

Do I feel better when a murderer is put to death? Actually I feel nothing, but I look around at my family and freinds and ask why we need to keep anyone who would purposely harm any of them around. We have enough evil in the world saving one innocent at the cost of a convicted murderer is an easy trade off to me.

From Investors Business Daily:

Posted 12/2/2005
Justice: Much has been made of the 1,000th execution in America since 1976, which took place Friday in North Carolina. But there's a chance that, if you're reading this, you're alive to do so because of the death penalty.

Opponents of the death penalty were much in evidence as double murderer Kenneth Lee Boyd became the 1,000th prisoner executed in the U.S. since capital punishment was reinstated 29 years ago. The event was much like the 2,000th death in Iraq, another recent mark that the media and anti-war groups obscenely used to their own benefit.

"This 1,000th execution is a milestone, a milestone we should all be ashamed of," said Boyd's lawyer, Thomas Mayer.

With all due respect to Mayer and the well-meaning people outside Central Prison in Raleigh — those who held 999 candles, one for each convict who preceded Boyd — the execution was not shameful. It was a matter of simple justice.

Let's start with the crime itself — one so loathsome it's hard to describe. Boyd killed his wife and father-in-law in 1988 using a gun that he paused to reload after running out of bullets. In other words, Boyd had time to think about what he was doing. He did it with no apparent remorse or conscience — in front of two of his children.

As awful as that was, it's typical of death row inmates. And remember: For each person caught and executed, dozens of others get off, free to kill again.

"World reaction" to this example of American judicial barbarity was predictably swift. From Japan to Germany to Britain, anti-death-penalty activists railed at the bloodthirsty Americans and their Old Testament ideas of vengeance and retribution.

It's true — the U.S. seems unique among Western nations in its embrace of the death penalty. A Gallup Poll taken in October showed that 64% of Americans still favor the death penalty, though that was the lowest level in 27 years. (It was 80% as recently as 1994.)

But ironically, the decline might be due to the success of capital punishment and tougher sentencing under "three strikes" laws. Both gained credence in the late-1970s crime boom and continue today.

People forget that, just 25 years ago, fear of violent crime rated high among Americans' top concerns. As murder rates soared, get-tough policies were the vogue. New laws put recidivist criminals behind bars for good. Others made sure that murderers faced the ultimate punishment for their heinous crimes.

The results were dramatic. In 1980, the murder rate peaked at 10.2 per 100,000 population — a record — as some 23,040 people were killed. By 2002, the murder rate was nearly halved, to 5.6 per 100,000. Only 16,204 people were murdered that year, down nearly 30%, even though the population had grown by more than 60 million since 1980.

Such success can lead to complacency, and complacency can lead to second thoughts — even opposition. Indeed, the death penalty has been studied repeatedly. Most of the research, however, finds much the same thing: The death penalty deters future murder. It is estimated that anywhere from five to 18 lives are saved as a direct result of a guilty murderer being put to death. These numbers aren't trivial. The higher ratio means that as many as 18,000 of us owe our lives today to the fact that 1,000 murderers have been put to death.
"This evidence greatly unsettles moral objections to the death penalty," wrote University of Chicago law professors Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule in a recent, frequently cited study, "because it suggests that a refusal to impose that penalty condemns numerous innocent people to death."

It's bad enough when one human being kills another; there's little we can do to bring back the dead. But it's wrong for us, as a society, to compound the crime by sparing those who are clearly guilty and, thereby, condemning untold innocent others to death.

We understand there are legitimate concerns about the death penalty and how it's applied. Fine, let's work to fix it. But the fact is, capital punishment deters murder.

Death is always tragic. And we're not bloodthirsty. But trading one very guilty life to save dozens of innocent ones is a deal that a truly just society should always make.