I’m not really a “grind the death penalty axe” type… I am vehemently anti-death penalty, but I just have enough axes to grind. Scott Greenfield has a good post on the Baze v. Rees decision here.
John Paul Stevens wrote, in his concurring opinion to Baze v. Rees:
I have relied on my own experience in reaching the conclusion that the imposition of the death penalty represents ‘the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes. A penalty with such negligible returns to the state (is) patently excessive and cruel and unusual punishment violative of the Eighth Amendment.'”
This sounds more like a dissenting opinion, doesn’t it?
I can accept the death penalty — maybe. However, I do believe that each execution should be public. Not only public, but it should be televised and should pre-empt every single other program on TV, cable, satellite, and even radio.
Why? Because when the state executes someone, WE execute that person. They die in our name, for after all, we are the state. I imagine that every backward-assed red state that still has the death penalty would rise up in arms if the NASCAR race done got pre-empted to bring the viewers a public execution.
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I have to disagree that pre-empting a NASCAR event would be unpopular.
It would me MORE popular
Just look at some of the photos taken at public executions in the last half of the 19th century and the early 20th. Or the depictions of the regular hangings at Tyburn hill in London. A packed house every time. These days, some intrepid soul periodically proposes televising an execution, in the fond belief that it would shock the lumpenproletariat out of their complacent view of the death penalty. But if the experiment was ever tried, I think it would break the would-be reformers’ hearts forever. There would be keggers in all the sports bars, death row specials on wide screen plasma TVs, betting pools for exact time of death, a market in T-shirts and souvenirs. Against cheerful vulgarity the gods themselves struggle in vain.
And the network that televised it would be able to charge Super Bowl prices to the advertisers. It’s an ill wind that blows no one a jackpot or two…..
You might be right.
However, imagine if we were forced to watch. Not that you could take a walk up to the hill to watch, or you could tune in to “The Execution Network,” but if you couldn’t turn the dial and escape the horror.
You would have to shut off the TV or watch the execution. Oh, and they should all take place during prime time.
And maybe you are right… maybe it would make execution even *more* popular. But, if that were the case, then I could live with it.
No way they deserve that platform. The murders are committed out of the public eye…why should the murderer then get a full primetime stage and likely a 15-minute Breaking News segment on his life story by CNN? This twisted sort of notoriety would probably serve as a motivation for some killers.
I don’t think I suggested that they “get” anything. Camera in the execution chamber, and everyone forced to watch. That’s all I suggest.
As far as notoriety goes… we already have that. If you commit a grotesque enough crime, you’ll get your 15 minutes of fame.
The bottom line is it isnt about what the killers “deserve.” It is about what we “deserve.” We deserve to be forced to watch what our taxpayer dollars are funding.