When you see a political candidate in the United States who opposes the death penalty it tells you a lot more about that person than just their view on this issue. Why? Because the death penalty in the United States is used as a political football. Given that poll after poll shows that most Americans ignore the details of how the death penalty is used in the United States, there is no upside for a politician to be against getting rid of murderers. Everyone wants to say they want death for the child molester, the terrorist and the serial killers. A politician who takes the unpopular stand against the death penalty is showing the world that when he/she is asked to have a stance on a life and death issue he/she is willing to act on principal despite current popular opinion. That is what I look for in a candidate.
I have been working do end the use of the death penalty for three years now and I can tell you that most legislators take a stand on this issue for political reasons only. They don't want to talk about whether it makes sense as a policy but whether it will effect their reelection or not. I have to say I have much more respect for the true believers of the death penalty than I do for the majority of their colleagues.
I think that if most Americans saw how the death penalty is used in the United States they would oppose it as unwise policy regardless of whether they accept it as a moral punishment or not. The death penalty is twice as expensive as life without parole. We can't create a system that 100% ensures us that innocent people will not be executed since it is a system run by human beings. DNA is recovered only in a small percentage of cases and even the laboratories that evaluate DNA have been riddled with mistakes. Mentally ill people are not protected from the death penalty. Similar crimes are not treated equally. Serial killers are given deals and certain District Attorneys seek the death penalty for crimes when neighboring counties may not. Most people on death row are indigent. Finally, many murder victim family members are speaking out and saying the death penalty process revictimizes them. The media loves death penalty cases in that every court date is covered, highlighting the crime over and over again. The media has no interest in covering the appeals of men serving life without parole.
This week many victim family members of 9/11 testified that the killing of Moussaoui will bring them no closure or extra peace with what happened to them. What do the rest of us get from executing this clearly mentally ill man who was in jail the whole year before 9/11 and is facing death because he did not tell the authorities about a planned attack that even he did not know the date of. What does this do for us?