By Count Friedrich von Olsen
I have no sympathy for lawbreakers. I’m a law and order type of guy. And it goes without saying, of course, that I am a Republican, one of the first order, a Tory, a Bonapartist, a practitioner of realpolitik, a dyed-in-the- wool conservative. It thus surprised me when, within the last fortnight, a few of my friends and acquaintances, ones I know are like me Republicans, what I thought were conservatives tried and true, rather rudely mixed it up with me when I nonchalantly pronounced that I was in favor of Proposition 62 and opposed to Proposition 66. These are the two statewide measures touching upon the death penalty. You would have thought I had killed someone myself, so outraged were my fellow conversationalists with my position…
Proposition 62 would essentially eliminate the death penalty in California, replacing it with life in prison without parole. Proposition 66 would do the opposite, streamlining for prosecutors the procedures they must follow, and lowering the bar they must mount, to obtain the death penalty in those cases where they are seeking it…
Upon my enunciation of my position, I was startled to hear from the others their size-up of me: I had gone renegade and was now a liberal, they said. This astounded me. It actually offended me somewhat. I consider my position to be the truly conservative one. Killing people seems pretty damn radical, if you ask me. What I was hearing threw me so much that I began probing into my ear canals on either side of my head with my little fingers to see if perhaps they were stuffed with a buildup of earwax to the point that I had misheard. As best as I can analyze it, their position was trifold: 1) Some people merit being put to death; 2) The legal process and all of its serpentine complexities provide those who should be killed with an interminable set of protections and legal delays that allow them to elude justice and the fate they deserve; and 3) warehousing these homicidal psychopaths in our prison system for the duration of their natural lives is an unacceptable burden on the taxpayers…
To the simpleminded, I suppose, these points seem cogent. Yet I detect an incoherence, an illogic, an inconsistency running right through this reasoning. Mind you, these are the same people, who like me, will drone on for hours and hours about the level of incompetency in government. Yet at the drop of a hat, they are willing to turn over to an office, ministry or agency of the government the authority to ascertain whether one of their fellow men is guilty and whether that guilt merits capital punishment. These same people are continuously disputing the wisdom, judgment, fairness, and competence of governmental taxing, or fining or regulating or permitting authorities. Such are issues of importance, no doubt, but of nowhere the near the gravity of executing someone. Yet they have seemingly no qualms about granting government officials the power to engage in the ultimate and irrevocable show of authority…
I have been called a lot of things, but it has been some seven decades or thereabouts since I was last called naïve I understand that there are some very bad people among us, ones with no regard for life and decency as most of us do. I recognize that these people are a danger to us. I believe we have the legitimate moral authority to protect ourselves from such people. That, however, does not require that we kill those people. That comes dangerously close to putting us in the same category as those we would execute…
Proposition 66, in making it easier to execute the guilty, would simultaneously make it easier to convict the innocent and, indeed, execute the innocent. Proposition 66 would change death penalty procedures by removing legal and Constitutional safeguards by limiting death row prisoners’ ability to present new evidence of their innocence once they are convicted, greatly increasing California’s risk of executing an innocent person. When did eroding Constitutional principles become a conservative imperative? If the People of California find an innocent man guilty and execute him using deliberate and methodical means, does that make us collectively, with malice of forethought guilty of murder and deserving of execution ourselves, individually?
Oh yes, what about the burden on the taxpayers, the constant and never-ending drain on the public treasury to keep these criminals, the lowest of the low, with all the necessities of life, shelter, food, medical care, clothing, and suitable diversions and to have safety and security measures in place so they cannot escape? Despite my own personal wealth, I am an advocate of frugality when it comes to the administration of our government. I think our public money should not be squandered so that it can be husbanded to do truly great things in the name of the collective, to elevate our community, our society our municipalities, our region, our state and our nation. It angers me to see our money wasted. But some things come at a price. It is not sympathy for lawbreakers that impels me to not consign them to eternity, but rather respect for myself and all of us together, our universal humanity. Bearing the cost of imprisoning our criminals rather than doing the most economic thing and killing them is the price of having a civilized society…