critique of Dean's death penalty stance
Richard Cohen finds fault with Dean's infamous MTP appearance - but does so in a substantive way, without focusing on the inane issue of whether 7% error in the number of troops is "egregiously wrong". Cohen writes:
It's a pleasure to see someone disagree with Dean for actual reasons, not foolish ones. Of course, his sound motivations doesn't mean he is wrong - it's obvious that Dean is not saying that we should execute people as a preventive measure even when they haven't committed a execution-worthy crime. However, Dean definitely did a poor job of making that distinction in the interview.
Dean once opposed the death penalty, citing "two reasons. One you might have the wrong guy, and, two, the state is like a parent" -- it ought to set an example. He also said, "I truly don't believe it's a deterrent." That's three reasons, but never mind. Then, on account of two horrific crimes, Dean's thinking underwent an evolution. "I came to realize because of the Polly Klaas case and because of similar other cases that sometimes the state inadvertently has a hand in killing innocent people because they let people out [of prison] who ought never to have been let out."
Granted, that was the case with Klaas, the 12-year-old California girl who was abducted, sexually attacked and murdered back in 1993. Her killer, Richard Allen Davis, had a long criminal record and was out on parole when he committed the crime. But none of his previous crimes were for death penalty offenses. Dean could argue that Davis should never have been free and deserved to die because of what he did to Klaas, but not for anything he did before. Davis didn't slip the noose. There was no noose for what he had done.
... Going on about felons getting out of jail and then killing, say, "15- and 12-year-old girls," he added, "That is every bit as heinous as putting to death someone who didn't commit the crime."
In all my years writing about the death penalty, I have never heard any politician admit that he would countenance the death of an innocent person in order to ensure that the guilty die. Dean is maybe the first to acknowledge the unacknowledgeable. For that, I suppose, he ought to be congratulated. But by equating the murder of one individual by another with the murder of an innocent person by the government -- the unpreventable with the preventable -- he has casually trashed several hundred years of legal safeguards.
It's a pleasure to see someone disagree with Dean for actual reasons, not foolish ones. Of course, his sound motivations doesn't mean he is wrong - it's obvious that Dean is not saying that we should execute people as a preventive measure even when they haven't committed a execution-worthy crime. However, Dean definitely did a poor job of making that distinction in the interview.
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