^{Bodmin Gallows, England, 17th Century} 

A particularly awful home invasion and triple murder case is currently being tried in Connecticut. Allegedly, two men broke into the Petit’s home, knocked the husband unconscious with a baseball bat, tied him and his two daughters aged 17 and 11 up, forced his wife to withdraw money from the bank, then raped and strangled her. The older daughter was raped and left tied to her bed. It is unclear whether the younger daughter was assaulted. She too was left tied to her bed. Finally, the men set the house on fire. The girls died of smoke inhalation. The husband managed to escape. If the accused are found guilty, they will very likely be sentenced to death. I won’t have a problem with that.

I understand the arguments of the anti-capital punishment crusaders. The most powerful argument in their arsenal is the fact that some innocent people were executed by the state, which made all of us complicit in a vile injustice. I plead guilty as charged and support every effort to release unjustly imprisoned death row inmates. DNA re-analysis, admission of improperly excluded evidence, revelations of jury tampering or prosecutorial misconduct and every other means should be utilized to ensure that nobody who is innocent is executed. If there’s even one remaining doubt, a death sentence should be commuted to life imprisonment.

With extensive review and safeguards in place, erroneous death sentences can be eliminated. But given the costs of that effort, the costs of appeals and the costs of the execution itself, why not just go for life sentences without parole? Doesn’t that have the same effect; removal of the murderer from society? Yes, for some people, putting a killer out of sight and out of mind is enough. And, the cost of enforcing a death sentence is very high, sometimes more than life imprisonment.

So, am I simply a vindictive Old Testament kind of guy who yearns for hang ‘em high retribution, whether or not it has any inhibitory effect? No, it’s something else. Something I think many people feel at a gut level but can’t articulate.

My feeling is that people who commit the ultimate evil act, murder for personal gain, are irretrievably damaged. Their negative mental energy pollutes our common mental space, the “Noosphere,” as some philosophers have called it. Even when killers are locked away, they are still on-line with the rest of us in a meaningful way. Once dead, I’m reasonably certain they are gone from the space where living mental energy interacts. Sound like nutty, new-agey bullshit? Maybe, to you. Not everyone gets it or understands why their intuitive reaction is what it is.

I know, some of you will argue that forgiveness and salvation are possible in this life even for the most reprehensible. You say their mental energy, soul, spirit or whatever you want to call it can be rehabilitated. I agree with you up to the “most reprehensible” part. I can’t find it in my heart to forgive them and I doubt any greater-than-human power would grant them salvation. Society can and should kill those specific, evil people. Fortunately, there aren’t many.