That Filthy Five! They Did Nothing to Challenge or Resist

To add in my two cents on the death penalty debate (background here, with comments from Stephanie, Bruce, and Andy):

It's easy to think of people who probably deserve the death penalty -- John Allen Mohammed, Slobodan Milosevic, Timothy McVeigh, etc. -- but when it comes to the marginal cases (say, people who might have committed a crime, but the evidence was sloppily presented, or the defense counsel was asleep at the wheel, or the governor doesn't believe in mercy) it becomes a lot more difficult to say that justice is being done well, or even adequately. That is, we should ask ourselves, Are there enough safeguards in the criminal justice system to put all the really bad guys on the chopping block, while keeping those whose guilt isn't indisputable away? The evidence suggests that there isn't, not if you want to execute enough people to have the death penalty function as a deterrant -- a dubious proposition in itself, as Andy notes.

That said, while I'm against the death penalty for a variety of reasons (for one, I don't believe a democratic state should be in the business of revenge), I have a hard time believing the alternative -- life without parole -- is more humane. As I've noted before, prison brutalizes ordinary people and makes already brutal people worse. This might not be so objectionable but for the fact that prison is supposed to have some kind of rehabilitative component to it. It's one thing to just lock away the truly bad people who are beyond all hope, but the barriers between them and the people we nominally want to help aren't very strong.