I tell people that it's on account of being conservative in the dictionary sense of the word that I prefer the Democrats. Capital punishment is a case in point. Legal, state-sponsored executions of people convicted of premeditated murder by a jury of their peers should be anathema to proponents of limited government. But, given the opportunity, American conservatives would stand in line to throw the switch, kick out the post, or inject the poison. When the execution is performed by a firing squad, there is a tradition of putting a blank in the weapon of one of the executioners, so that no one knows for sure that he shot and killed another person--a wholly superfluous measure that, for many Americans who identify themselves as "cultural conservatives," would take some of the fun out of it.
In 2004, I learn at Salon, Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death in Texas after his conviction on charges of intentionally setting a fire that killed his three children, a two-year-old and twins aged one. At trial, a local fire marshal testified that the house fire was arson, and that an accelerant had been strategically placed to foil any attempted rescue. Prosecutors argued that the motive was to kill the kids and called as witnesses neighbors who said Willingham, who got outside before the fire began to rage, expressed concern for the safety of his car. The jury was persuaded.
But the Innocence Project commissioned a report that concluded, two years after Willingham's execution, that the fire was not a case of arson. The Project's panel, which consisted of some of the country's top arson investigators, also found that Ernest Ray Willis, another Texan sentenced to death for a similar crime, had not set a fire that killed two women in 1986. After living for seventeen years on death row, Willis was freed by the order of a federal judge in 2004--the same year Willingham was put to death. The Texas Forensic Science Commission is now investigating whether forensic scientists are guilty of misconduct in the cases. Their forensic interpretations, according to the Project's panel, were scientifically invalid. The Texas commission will study whether their testimony was consistent with the state of knowledge at the time of the trials and, if it was, whether new developments in the field should later have prompted them to question the testimony they had given.
The details of these sorry stories are an embarrassment to American conservatives despite the fact that they are in line with conservative precepts about the fallibility of human beings and the folly of expecting perfection or certitude in human affairs. "Muddle through without breaking too much crockery," exhorts George Will. Edmund Burke would approve. Yet Will and virtually all other "conservative-minded" Americans support capital punishment. Yet if capital punishment is not abolished, and justice continues to be administered by fallible human beings, it is inevitable that innocent people will be put to death. Does not executing innocent people qualify as breaking crockery?
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