I meant to write this post about a week or two ago.

Mary­land just heard from its com­mit­tee to inves­ti­gate the abo­li­tion of the death penalty and the committee’s con­clu­sion is that the argu­ments are stacked against keep­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment around.  (I first dis­cov­ered this via Gideon’s blog)

The thing I find fas­ci­nat­ing and inex­plic­a­ble is that the pro­po­nents of the death penalty con­tinue to uti­lize the same argu­ments in their efforts to evan­ge­lize. The Anti-Capitalists… wait, let’s make that the Anti-Capital-Punishmentists (doesn’t sound as snazzy, but it won’t get me an FBI dossier) argue that there remains race bias in cap­i­tal cases, that cap­i­tal cases are arbi­trar­ily decided, that the human ele­ment defeats the pos­si­bil­ity of a truly fair trial, and that the death penalty fails to deter future criminals.

The Capital-Punishmentists (for uniformity’s sake) argue “nuh-uh!”. Scan­ning the com­ments in Gideon’s arti­cle show sim­i­lar argu­ments that I’ve heard all to often — the sta­tis­tics aren’t accu­rate. The stud­ies don’t defin­i­tively show that. The issues don’t “sub­stan­tially” affect the deter­mi­na­tion. I would under­stand if the argu­ments were reversed; if the pro­po­nents argued sta­tis­tics and stud­ies and the oppo­nents claimed that the stud­ies aren’t con­clu­sive. After all, this is a ques­tion of whether we put some­one to death — you’d want to be sure that the stud­ies are reli­able and determinative.

But to attempt to make a case for the death penalty by say­ing that the case against it isn’t strong enough makes no sense to me.