…That they disagree with yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling that the death penalty is an unconstitutional penalty for child rape when the victim is not killed. I can understand their desire to make their opinions known on this issue. The last thing you want when running for president is to look soft on child rapists. But the article (from MSNBC) does provide some background on Obama’s stance on the death penalty.
They note that since his days in the Illinois legislature, he has worked to ensure that the death penalty is applied fairly by requiring the taping of interrogations and opposing making it easier to impose the death penalty on accused gang members. But he does not reject the punishment. In The Audacity of Hope, he wrote:
While the evidence tells me that the death penalty does little to deter crime, I believe there are some crimes — mass murder, the rape and murder of a child — so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment.
I find this argument incredibly frustrating. He is right that there is little to no evidence that the death penalty deters crime. But he seems to be justifying humanity’s basest instincts to react to violence with more violence. This makes no sense to me. If society, or the community as a whole is no better than such individuals, how do we ever expect society to change?
Pure politics. As long as most of the US public support the death penalty, don’t expect any mainstream candidates to oppose it. But I encourage you to try to influence the opinions of the American public. That’s the long term souce of change on this policy…