In a recent column examining Massachusetts’ consideration of the death penalty, conservative columnist George Will cites the conclusions of death penalty experts who have closely examined the accuracy and effectiveness of this punishment. Will cited the work of the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment and especially the experience of author Scott Turow. Will believes that Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s effort to find a faultless death penalty will ultimately fail:

A properly, meaning narrowly, drawn capital punishment statute is necessarily problematic. Restricting that penalty to a few offenses guarantees that it will rarely be inflicted. Furthermore, the thick fabric of procedural protections that courts have woven around capital punishment guarantees the elapse of, on average, more than a decade between a conviction and an execution, and has generated considerable uncertainty about who among those convicted of the few capital offenses will be executed.

Yet a punishment’s deterrent power depends not only on the punishment’s severity but also on the swiftness and probability of its application… . Romney is right that DNA evidence, which opponents of capital punishment have used to free some innocent persons improperly convicted, can buttress capital punishment by establishing guilt unassailably. However, DNA evidence is not decisive — does not provide incontrovertible proof — in most capital cases.

A person’s views of capital punishment often turn, Turow believes, on the person’s views of “the perfectibility of human beings and the durability of evil.” But imperfections and temptations to evil are not confined to criminals; they taint all human systems. And as for making a potential killer’s “reason stare,” Turow says dryly: “Murder is not a crime committed by those closely attuned to the real-world effects of their behavior.” Turow expects that the Supreme Court will eventually “conclude that capital punishment and the promise of due process of law are incompatible.” Be that as it may, if Romney, a reasonable man, reads Turow’s essay, he will have an even more rounded appreciation of how the ultimate punishment makes reason not merely stare but ultimately turn away. (Washington Post, October 30, 2003).


See Deterrence and Innocence.