At this point, nothing about the death penalty  in the United States makes any sense, logically or ethically, and that is true for all sides of the capital punishment debate. September 20 should be designated Capital Punishment Day in memory of the contradictions, absolutist pronouncements, convenient rationalizations and everything else that occurred in the years, days and hours before Troy Davis’s execution in Georgia. Then perhaps America as a society will devote one day a year to considering rationally and unemotionally how the death penalty should fit into its criminal justice system without having the discussion warped by the peculiarities of  individual cases. As it stands now, not only is capital punishment an ethics train wreck, the policy debate about it is an ethics train wreck. Everyone who even dips his toe into either becomes irresponsible, conflicted or intellectually dishonest.

Did you know that another inmate was executed yesterday? I didn’t, until this morning. In Texas, white supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed Wednesday night for the horrific 1998 dragging death slaying of James Byrd Jr., a man from East Texas who had his head pulled off by a chain attached to a truck for the offense of being black. If death penalty opponents are serious and have any integrity, they needed to show it by protesting the execution of Brewer exactly as intensely as they opposed the death of Davis, but of course they did not. Continue reading →