Dold’s statement supporting death of death penalty missed a major justification.

 

The Chicago Tribune obituary for legendary editor/publisher Bruce Dold laudably highlighted his 2007 Board editorial supporting abolishment of the Illinois death penalty with this justification: “The evidence of mistakes, the evidence of arbitrary decisions, the sobering knowledge that govern­ment can’t provide certainty that the innocent will not be put to death — all that prompts name.”

 

That was an obvious justification in a country that has executed hundreds of innocents during our 250 years. Since 1973, over 200 people sentenced to death in America have been freed, but the Death Penalty Information Center lists Carlos DeLuna and Cameron Todd Willingham as "possibly innocent" after execution. For every 8 people executed in the U.S., one person on death row has been exonerated. 

 

But Dold’s Trib Board omitted an overwhelming moral justification for death penalty abolishment. Execution represents immoral killing that serves no public purpose other than to satisfy the bloodlust of a citizenry the state concurs must be satisfied. One can argue that executions represent state sponsored murder no better than murder by an individual executed.

 

It may even be worse in the sense that individual murder is often motivated by mental defect or overwhelming outrage triggered by a real or imagined injury inflicted by the victim. But the state commits their murders under the guise of law after lengthy self-righteous deliberation. The executioner who administers the lethal drugs, sends current to the electric chair, or fires the firing squad gun, is considered a faithful public servant rather than just another cold blooded killer. So Is everyone in the state who participates in this barbarity still practiced by 23 states, thankfully not Illinois.

 

Tho based on just one rationale, Bruce Dold deserves the recognition noted in his storied career for his principled opposition to the Illinois death penalty which he championed 4 years before its enactment in 2011. 

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