A pall of shame

Now that Election Day furor has subsided, it's time to look at what issues drove voters to the polls. Six states voted to raise the minimum wage. Others debated gay marriage and abortion. But none were quite as ridiculous as Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst's platform: a "death penalty sentence for a second sexually violent offense against a child under age 14." Like other states' versions of "Jessica's Law," Texas' would also impose tougher penalties for first-time sex offenders and require that they be monitored by GPS tracking for life.\nThough I have no intention of defending the countless acts of child predation each year -- or those who commit the vile, horrific crimes -- capital punishment is, without question, a horrible way to prevent sexual abuse in the future. Dewhurst's pledge may be well intentioned, but it reeks of self-righteousness. \nThe hooded executioner already treads a thin line between public service and state-sanctioned manslaughter, but by assigning an artificial and ultimately meaningless classification like "minor" to the victim, the state implicitly belittles the suffering of "adult" victims. \nWhether you believe a child could suffer more than an adult for the same crime is your own prerogative, but justice, for every reason imaginable, is blind. Not only blind to the defendant, but also toward the victim. Hypocritically, Dewhurst's law imposes the death penalty for offenses against children, ignoring that the severely mentally and physically disabled are no more capable of defending themselves from a potential rapist than a healthy 6-year-old. Nor could an 85-year-old in assisted living very well fight off a disgruntled health care provider. Children may be vulnerable, but not uniquely so. \nStill, let's briefly assume that it really does take a village to raise a child. No legitimate study has ever found capital punishment to be an effective method of deterrence. True, the nationwide murder rate has dropped even as the number of executions has increased slightly. However, observed on a state-by-state basis, "states without the death penalty fared much better than states with the death penalty in reducing their murder rates," according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit think tank. In fact, the gap between the murder rates in death penalty versus non-death-penalty states has increased 42 percent since 1990.\nNot only does the death penalty fail to prevent violent crime, but capital punishment merely further institutionalizes the racist tendencies of an already distressingly prejudiced justice system. A 1990 General Accounting Office study found that "in 82 percent of the studies, race of victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving a death sentence, i.e., those who murdered whites were found to be more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks." \nWatch the execution rate for minorities skyrocket if Dewhurst's suggestion are instituted -- not because minorities are more likely to rape a minor, but because the criminal justice system is pervasively racist. \nSince it doesn't come from statistical realities, the archaic notions of justice espoused by the supporters of capital punishment cannot be confused for anything but predisposed bloodlust.