See Ya Later Death Penalty, Kind Of

From the Baltimore Sun:

A House of Delegates committee Friday approved the Senate's plan to restrict capital punishment to cases with specific kinds of evidence, a major step toward added limitations on Maryland's death penalty that could receive final legislative approval as soon as next week.

The bill would allow the death penalty in cases where there is video proof, a confession by the accused, or DNA evidence. It is hoped that as a result, less innocent people would be put to death by the state. The bill is a compromise between anti and pro death penalty advocates.

Killing less innocent people is great but the death penalty is not wrong because it kills innocent people. It is wrong because it kills people in general. Politicians on both sides of the aisle give the argument that the death penalty deters murders. If this is true, then it doesn't say a lot about the character of Americans. The United States has roughly the same murder rate as Albania and Georgia in Eastern Europe at about 5.6 murders per 100,000 people. Compared to other Western Industrialized countries, it is crazy:

Canada - 1.85 murders per 100,000 people
France - 1.64
England - 1.37
Germany - 0.98

And guess what? Each of these countries have abolished the death penalty at least 28 years ago. It is quite obvious you do not have to kill criminals to deter murders. To say that it deters murders is to say that murderers are critically thinking about the murder, weighing pros and cons. When in fact most murders are the result of emotional and irrational thinking. It is flawed logic. Add to it that it costs more money to kill prisoners than to hand out a life sentence and you have a very logical reason why we need to abolish it, at least at a state level.

So why are so many Americans so eager to kill criminals? Is it a primal instinct? A cultural difference? Or is it that it based on an antiquated belief that is rarely questioned by the majority? I believe the latter.

By the way, 14 states have abolished the death penalty:
Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin