In California, not one death sentence had been carried out since the December 2006 ruling by U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel that California’s lethal-injection process violates restrictions against cruel and unusual punishment. Since then new regulations have been put in place but California’s supply of sodium pentothal, one of the drugs used in lethal injections, has expired. The sole manufacturer of sodium pentothal says that no more will be available until 2011. This means that even if the new regulations are found to be sufficient in the meantime, there is a de facto moratorium on executions.

 While we have this breathing space, perhaps this is the ideal time to ask: should we have a death penalty?

 The first point in this argument is one of trust? Does any government deserve that much? The ability to permanently silence dissenters, the ability to eliminate those who act up, the ability to accuse, discredit and rid itself of its opponents is more power than I want any government to have. If a new age of McCarthyism occurs, and you are on the “wrong” side, a death penalty is the last tool you would want a government to be able to use. Even if you trust your government not to abuse its power, do you trust your government to never make mistakes? 138 people have been exonerated of their death sentence convictions in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. If our system was faster about applying the death penalty that would be 138 exonerated corpses. Beyond even this, we have no way of knowing how many more were executed for crimes they did not commit.

 The second is, does the death penalty do as advertised? Punishment should deter crime, or it is merely vengeance. Obviously it is 100% effective at deterring the executed from committing crimes, but does the death penalty deter others from committing crimes? According to a study by Bowers and Pierce, “there were, on the average, two additional homicides in the month after an execution.” This indicates that society-accepted killing by the government encourages individuals to follow suit. September 2000 statistics from the New York Times show that between 1980 and 2000 “the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48 percent to 101 percent higher than in states without the death penalty.” So, in states without a death penalty, homicide is a lot less common.

The third and final point is cost. According to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, the cost of a murder case where the death penalty is sought is 70% greater, “seeking the death penalty in murder trials adds an average of 48% to the cost of the trial,” and noted other differences before concluding that instead of spending “at least $137.7 million per year to maintain our dysfunctional system,” we could “adopt a policy of terminal confinement at an annual cost of $11.5 million. In other words, we could be spending less than a tenth what we are now.