Death Penalty Pondering

I have never had to vote for or against the death penalty, I have never been given the opportunity. I have said “that a rapid dog needs to be put down” in an argument for it. But lately I have been giving it a lot of thought. Two articles (actually one column and one story) sparked the desire to write something about it. Michael Medved wrote a column calling Liberals out.

Liberals reveal their appalling hypocrisy when they proudly claim to oppose the influence of religion on politics, and then try to cite the Bible to argue against the death penalty..

He then goes on to show biblical references on how the Bible does not in fact prohibit the death penalty in both the Old and New Testaments. This is important because it easy show in the Old, while the New is what people pull the Biblical references against the penalty.

On the other side, the EU is scolding Texas for using the death Penalty.

"We believe that elimination of the death penalty is fundamental to the protection of human dignity, and to the progressive development of human rights.
We further consider this punishment to be cruel and inhumane," Lisbon stated on behalf of the EU."There is no evidence to suggest that the use of the death penalty serves as a deterrent against violent crime and the irreversibility of the punishment means that miscarriages of justice - which are inevitable in all legal systems – cannot be redressed

At Pro-Death Penalty.com they have this quote:

"If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call."

John McAdams - Marquette University/Department of Political Science, on deterrence

Over at My Way News they cite a 2003 study done by Naci Mocan that determined an actual, measurable deterrent.

Although these results demonstrate the existence of the deterrent effect of capital punishment, it should be noted that there remain a number of significant issues surrounding the imposition of the death penalty. For example, although the Supreme Court of the United States remains unconvinced that there exists racial discrimination in the imposition of the death penalty, recent research points to the possibility of such discrimination.35 Along the same lines, there is evidence indicating that there is discrimination regarding who gets executed and whose sentence gets commuted once the death penalty is received.36 Given these concerns, a stand for or against capital punishment should be taken with caution.

So far I showed at an argument that makes a Biblical case for it, groups of politician saying don’t do it because we say so, and a scholar who says he can prove a deterrent. It would be easy just to accept the Bible quotes, call the politicians a bunch of stuffed shirts and bleeding hearts, and justify it with a study. But none of it really puts my mind at easy. As I started to go into on my Bad Behavior post, I think we need to do more up front before we jump to the end.

Naci Mocan has another paper he is working on with R. Kaj Gittings called "The Impact of Incentives on Human Behavior: Can We Make It Disappear? The Case of the Death Penalty" that I want to read through. The title strikes a cord with my current frame of thought.

Right now if I did have a chance to vote on the Death Penalty, I'm not possitive I would still be for it.