EDITORIAL: ​“Should the issue of life or death be trust­ed to a sys­tem that can get guilt or inno­cence wrong?”

After members of the Wisconsin Senate passed a resolution calling for a referendum on reinstating the death penalt, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial criticized the vote and urged members of the state Assembly to reject the proposal. ThoughWisconsin has not had the death penalty since 1853, the state legislature has considered a reinstatement measure during each of the past 20 years. The Sentinel voiced concerns about innocence, race, deterrence, and a variety of other issues in its editorial:

The death penalty is morally wrong. Lawmakers should simply do the right thing and retain the ban. An irony is that this effort to restore the death penalty in Wisconsin comes when the nation has developed qualms about the punishment - as reflected in a slowed pace of executions.

The discovery of innocent people on death row has led to the doubts. This development points to the fallibility of our criminal justice system. Should the issue of life or death be trusted to a system that can get guilt or innocence wrong? That question, which has prompted much pause elsewhere, should do likewise in Madison.

Yes, the resolution would limit the penalty to homicides supported by DNA evidence. But surely, its backers aren’t suggesting that check would make the penalty infallible, are they? After all, conclusions from legitimate DNA evidence may be erroneous.

There are other problems: It is almost inescapably applied in a racially discriminatory manner. It serves no crime-fighting purpose. And maintaining a death row costs a fortune.

A small skirmish has broken out over studies. But of hundreds of comparative studies - that is, studies that compare states with the death penalty and states without it or countries before and after dropping the penalty - none shows that the death penalty has deterred a single murder, as notes sociologist Ted Goertzel of Rutgers University.

Backers of the death penalty cite mathematical studies using what the experts call “econometric modeling.” Yes, some such studies do show a deterrent effect. Others, however, show just the opposite: Executions actually encourage murders. Right now, those studies, whatever their outcome, simply can’t be trusted. They lack assurance that the mathematical models duplicate reality.

Yes, in the face of a heinous crime, the impulse is for revenge. But a civilized society must control that impulse - a lesson the Wisconsin Legislature learned more than 150 years ago. Now, the Assembly must heed that lesson anew.

(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 13, 2006). See Recent Legislative Activity and Editorials.