Firing squads in Florida?

Not satisfied with the current methods employed to kill people in Florida, state representative Brad Drake wants to bring back firing squads.


What is the purpose of capital punishment?  It can't be rehabilitation, since the criminal is dead after the sentencing is carried out.

Maybe it's deterrence?  Discourage other criminals from committing the worst of crimes?  The data on this is complicated and open to interpretation.  Here's a good source of raw data from the Death Penalty Information Center.  Many of the states with the highest murder rate per capita do have death penalty statutes; and many of the states without death penalty statutes have lower murder rates per capita.  But rather than get into an extended and heated debate over the interpretation of data, I want to look at the more fundamental premise: when someone (a potential murderer) finds him/herself in a situation where they could potentially commit a murder, do they ask themselves first: "Wait, do I live in a state that has a death penalty statute?  Maybe I should calm down and think this through first."

Quick, does the state you live in have a death penalty statute?  If you don't know (most people don't), then how can you argue that the presence or absence of such a statute can have an effect on murder rates?  Is the average murderer more up-to-date on criminal law prior to committing their crime?

For me, the murder rates of states with such statutes compared to states without is inconclusive for this very reason.  I think it would be more interesting to look at convicted criminals, and whether they were aware of state law prior to committing their crime.  Or general knowledge about death penalty statues among the populace.

So, the value of the death penalty for rehabilitation is obviously nil, and the value as a deterrent is questionable.  What other reasons for it could there be?  There are, I suppose, reasons that are not related to the crime, such as overcrowding of prisons, the cost of keeping such criminals locked up, and so on; but these are hardly reasons to kill people.

What we're left with, then, is revenge.  It's an "eye for an eye" mentality that's meant to give satisfaction to people who want to inflict the same level of punishment on the criminal that criminal inflicted on the victim.  By this reasoning, a rapist should be raped; or a wife-beater should be beaten.  A person who was illegally wire-tapped should be able to wire-tap the government back.  Or a person who committed a traffic violation, like speeding, should, um, well, I don't know what the "eye for an eye" punishment is in that case.  So clearly, this view of "justice" is untenable.

But also, killing the criminal does nothing to provide justice to the murder victim.  The victim is dead; there's nothing that can bring justice to him/her.  If the victim was providing for others and their death deprived the survivors of their livelihood, then we should consider justice for them.  But killing the criminal doesn't solve the problem; a monetary penalty commensurate with the lost income potential would be more fitting.  And for friends and family members who suffered due to the loss of their loved one, the satisfaction of seeing the criminal put to death is just that: satisfaction.  Is this not the very definition of revenge?

And for all of the religionists who still want to see the "worst of the worst" sentenced in this way, how do you reconcile that with, oh, the commandment against killing?  Seems inconsistent to me.

If we have a system of justice in which innocent people could potentially be accused and convicted of crimes for which the sentence is death, and could potentially be sentenced to death and have this sentence carried out, then how can we allow this practice to persist?  Do we, as a society, say that it's okay for 5% of death penalty sentences to be carried out on people who are innocent, in order to allow the other 95% of executions to proceed?  If so, what's the number at which we think that capital punishment should no longer be allowed?  10%?  50%?  Why isn't the number 1 (not 1%, just 1 innocent person murdered)?

My sense of morality cannot support the death penalty in any case.  As an atheist, I know that this life that we have is the only life we'll ever have, and I don't think that anyone has the right to take that away from anyone, in any circumstance.  The Declaration of Independence got this right: the inalienable right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.  If it's really inalienable, then no crime should be able to alienate it, right?  I'm against war for this reason, as well as the murdering of abortion doctors.  I understand there are circumstances such as self-defense; or police acting to protect the innocent against, say, a madman with a gun; and so on, where it's unavoidable.  But premeditated murder by the state?  That's easy: "no."

Getting back to the case in Florida, this particular lawmaker is trying to argue that firing squads are more humane than lethal injection, because a skilled marksman can kill someone more effectively and with less pain and suffering than the cocktail of drugs used in lethal injections.  But this completely misses the point that we should't be talking about state-sanctioned premeditated murder in the first place.