Donald’s Death Penalty

Among the unending litany of deeply ignorant pronouncements uttered and/ or tweeted by the quasi-human who currently inhabits the White House is this:

Instituting the Death Penalty for drug traffickers.

Because this is a way to solve the opioid crisis.

Let’s put aside the moral argument against executing fellow citizens for wrongdoing. Let’s put aside the moral argument against the government of a twenty-first century “leader of the free world” country endorsing execution. Let’s ignore the fact that such exemplar countries as China, Myanmar as Iran have death penalties for drug traffickers—and none of our “comparator nations” do. Let’s pay no attention to the extensive research on drug use and addiction—why and how people get addicted, how and why the market is created for the manufacture and sale of drugs.

Obviously the person inhabiting the White House has ignored all this.

Apparently, he also doesn’t know that a recent study (University of Colorado) found that 88% of criminologists do not believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent.

Apparently, no one told him about the compelling research that says the swiftness and certainty of punishment (not the severity) are the best deterrents.

Apparently, he is unaware that, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average time spent on death row before execution is currently about 16 years and climbing – and that more than half of all death row sentences are eventually overturned.

Apparently he doesn’t know that cases seeking the death penalty cost an average of $1.26 million to prosecute, and that maintaining each death row prisoner costs taxpayers $90,000 more per year than a prisoner in general population.

This is a persistently, proudly, loudly ignorant man. Please don’t laugh at his antics. What he says, and what he can do, has the power to ruin lives. Is ruining lives.

(archival photo is of the 1936 execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, accused of the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby.)