A Libertarian argument against the death penalty
Posted in The N.C. Way by R Lee Wrights on October 10th, 2009 by Sean Haugh
There are a whole lot of good reasons to be against the death penalty. I’m sure you’ve heard them all: it’s inhumane; it’s used disproportionately against the poor; we could be executing an innocent man; it’s expensive; it really doesn’t deter crime; and so on. But here’s one that maybe you haven’t thought of before.
The death penalty is just another outrageously overgrown government program.
You see, from a Libertarian perspective, it is the nature of government to grow until it’s simply out of control. Just about every government initiative starts out as a great idea. Of course we all want feed hungry children, make sure everyone has a solid roof over their heads, keep the environment clean. Libertarians share these compassionate human goals. We just question whether another government program is actually going to do anything to solve the problem.
In the beginning, a government program is a wonderful thing. It offers hope, and maybe even does have a positive impact on the people it’s designed to help. But before long, the program has changed into an institution. What is right and good no longer matters. The new incentive is to keep the program growing.
Eventually the program becomes so bloated that it is actively harming the people its supposed to help. The only solution that ever occurs to our politicians is to take even more of our tax money and pass more laws in a desperate attempt to make the program work. And we wonder why people have become so cynical about government.
Every government program follows this life cycle, from good idea to porkbarrel monstrosity. The death penalty behaves no differently. Let’s start from the beginning.
Death penalty advocates say that it’s justified, even necessary, to execute cold-blooded killers. They say that people who have committed such heinous crimes, having so viciously denied the right to life to others, have forfeited their own right to live.
Take Ted Bundy for example. (I doubt I have to explain who he is, and even if I do I’d rather not. He was that bad.) OK, I say, let’s kill Ted Bundy. That’s a great idea. I doubt anybody really shed a tear when the state of Florida put Bundy out of everyone’s misery.
But what happens next? Now we have a public policy to kill multiple murderers, and we have given government the means to keep doing it. Like all government power, it starts to grow.
The first way it grows is that we start putting people to death for different crimes. It doesn’t just stop at Ted Bundy. Sometimes just one murder is enough for a criminal to prove how unworthy he is to live. What about serial rapists? I don’t think I’d miss any of them either. Some think “drug kingpins” have also forfeited their right to live. And let’s not forget that idiot that keeps getting drunk behind the wheel and then finally killed that poor little girl in a car accident. But hey, let’s not stop there. In fact, there are so many really bad things people do, the federal government alone authorizes the death penalty for sixty (yes, 60) different crimes.
The bigger the program gets, the more it protects the rich and powerful. As government gives protection to those who can afford it, it takes away protection from those who can’t. So you end up with situations where a zealous prosecutor, with all the resources of government at his disposal, has every reason to go for a conviction with a maximum sentence against some poor defendant who can hardly afford to buy lunch, much less hire a good lawyer.
Our nifty little government program has now gotten to where plenty of people can be executed, while O.J. Simpson can enjoy a round of golf at his leisure. Here in North Carolina, we have over 200 people currently on death row. You can’t tell me they are all as bad as Ted Bundy.
You can’t tell me they’re all guilty either. Once you have hundreds of people on death row, it’s a statistical certainty that at least one of them is innocent. In fact, North Carolina saw two cases within a week of each other in 1999 where men who were a very short time away from execution had to be set free because new evidence proved that they were indeed innocent. How many more people have to be released from death row before we realize we’ve gone too far in killing prisoners?
So we’ve gone from killing Ted Bundy, which we all agree is a great idea, to maintaining an ever-growing killing industry that often produces completely unjust results. A typical out of control government bureaucracy. Like all those other public policy pipedreams, the death penalty will never work. We need to stop this murderous boondoggle now.
Sean Haugh is assistant editor for Liberty For All. Sean is married to longtime Libertarian Pam Adams, and they have a family of three dogs and five cats. Besides them, Sean loves God, Liberty, and Oklahoma Sooners football. Write to Sean at seanhaugh@mindspring.com.
