What is absolutely amazing about the outcome last night is that Murphy declared his opposition to the death penalty, even in cases of terrorist attacks, and he may have won anyway. It is possible that his victory, like Cazayoux’s in Louisiana, will be short-lived and will be reversed in 2010 because of this and similar issues. Murphy’s stance on this is fairly left-leaning for someone who wants to join the Blue Dog caucus, but instead of becoming a huge liability it barely registered. It barely registered despite an NRCC ad highlighting this position. Four years ago, to say nothing of seven years ago, he could not have survived politically had he taken the same position. One of the interesting things about this race, then, is the degree to which economic issues have completely overwhelmed the old politics of national security and terrorism on which the GOP relied since ‘02, and they have done so even in one of the more culturally conservative districts in that part of the country.I'm not entirely sure this is correct. Well, it is, but I'm not sure whether Scott Murphy's opposition to the death penalty is a good predictor of economics overwhelming social issues. My sense is that the death penalty is actually in a state of decline in America. In the past few years, New Jersey, New Mexico and, I believe, Wisconsin have ended the practice, and Martin O'Malley has discussed ending it in Maryland. Capital punishment was a fight that the left abandoned some time ago, and ironically that might have lowered the temperature on the issue for people to come to terms with the real principles at stake and realize that the death penalty might not be the absolute good that people thought it was a decade ago. In my own family, both of my conservative Republican parents, who as soon as ten years ago were staunch supporters of capital punishment, have both become opposed to it. I know that the reason for this was out of pro-life principles, but it seems to me that, as crime has decreased, the demand for capital punishment has decreased. As we've watched our criminal justice system over that time we've come to realize that it's hardly perfect enough to handle such profound decisions. And being as the only plausible defense of the death penalty is that it is a fitting punishment for murder--the deterrent argument being implausible and unsupported by evidence--it is worth wondering whether the moral satisfaction of caveman justice is worth possibly killing an innocent man.
Let's put it another way: twenty years ago, the two questions asked (by the media, anyway) of any new Supreme Court appointee were what are they going to do about abortion, and what are they going to do on the death penalty. Now, it's pretty much just abortion (which is a tragic state of affairs when it comes to evaluating our judges, but that's beside the point). To further demonstrate how small an issue this has become, in 2005 Tim Kaine was elected Governor of Virginia despite opposing the death penalty in one of the most execution-friendly states in the country, and just a few weeks back Bill Richardson ended the death penalty in New Mexico and there was nary a peep from the right about it, at least none that I could discern. The current Republican National Committee chairman is anti-execution, as is social conservative leader Sen. Sam Brownback. Barack Obama's anti-death penalty stance, even despite a cringeworthy attempt to disguise it by voicing some equivocal support for a Louisiana capital punishment statute, was absolutely not an issue in the 2008 election. On every level, this issue has receded from public view, and I suspect that we'll see more momentum on ending the practice among the right than the left in the coming years, as the declining crime rate, coupled with rhetoric that says that every life is sacred (which is easily enough ignored, elided and rationalized among this group, I admit, though maybe not forever) might well lead to an end to one of our more barbaric practices.
I don't actually think that the death penalty will end any time soon, simply because American self-righteousness will continue to necessitate that every crime receive some crudely comensurate punishment. There is a sense that some people are too evil to live, and it's hard to argue that someone who kills an entire family is anything other than evil, and it shouldn't be argued otherwise. However, the fact that it's not the killing that bothers the average American (if we're killing someone in retribution, to "give some peace to the family", then how could it be?) but rather the notion that someone might "get away" with having to spend the rest of their lives in a terrifying, cramped prison with no privacy and constant fear for one's life strikes me as much more of a statement of American sanctimony than anything else I can think of.
