Originally posted on my private blog January 18th, 2008.I am opposed to the death penalty as it's currently implemented now for several reasons:
1) It is more expensive than imprisoning a criminal for life
2) It fails to have a deterrent effect
3) The wrong people have been executed with alarming frequency
Some capital punishment proponents wish to address #1 by limiting the legal appeals process and #2 by applying the death penalty more frequently. This would inflate #3 dramatically, which is the most troubling of my three objections.
However, mostly as an entertaining speculation, what if we instead applied capital punishment to very serious white collar crime and corruption? The damage caused by such activities can be many multiples more destructive than a single violent one, so I feel such a consideration is justified. How does this idea stack up against my objections?
1) Such crimes occur rarely enough and are already so expensive to prosecute that the additional economic burden of the death penalty is comparatively small.
2) We know that such crime is highly premeditated and committed over long periods, so its chance for preventive effect (even if a conviction for execution is very rarely actually attained) seems higher and such cases attract large amounts of media attention. Also, the long term nature of financial crime gives plenty of opportunity for perpetrators to end the schemes sooner and turn themselves in order to avoid the possibility of a death sentence.
3) Economic crimes can often be proven beyond doubt owing to the large number of witnesses and the huge paper trails they generate. Additionally, serious white collar crime defendants can generally afford excellent legal representation - in stark contrast to today's death penalty defendants.
I don't think I would be in favor of capital punishment under any circumstances but it does make for a sobering examination of how we fail to take economic crime as seriously as we should.
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