rs cannot be burglarized?” (“Against the Death Penalty” 201). The idea of retribution for one’s crime is only fair if it is carried out on a broad scale. There is no selective justice; for what is just will remain so and that which is not will fall. There is no reason for a state to kill people when not at war. It is not at all consistent with any acceptable definition of dignity or justice, and it reflects poorly on any governmental body that practices it. There is no true sense of security found in the death penalty. The way our court system works insures that the eventual execution of any death row inmate is years after the conviction. Any security that could be found in the death of a murderer is, by the very virtue of the system, nullified, as the death, or “retribution” as van den Haag says, is not an expedient event, but rather drawn out and painful.Any system of punishment is not immune to human errors. Inevitably, as is acknowledged by both Conrad and van den Haag, some innocent people will be wrongly accused and convicted. But the attitude taken by the retentionists, that these possible mistakes are no reason to abolish the death penalty, is blatantly undignified, unfair and inconsistent with justice. The notion that “If they make mistakes, one can hope that God will correct the courts hereafter” (208), is a callous attitude. The essence of van den Haag’s argument is to kill them all and let God sort them out. This argument is a deceptive way for supporters of the death penalty to avoid accountability and pass responsibility to a source “higher” than the laws of the land. There is not a great deal of public awareness about the number of innocent people on death row, but since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1972 over 75 death row inmates have been exonerated and released, with many being exonerated posthumously. Texas, in particular, has ...
