But given police corruption, incompetent prosecutors, and an over-reliance on circumstantial evidence in court, a great many death-penalty cases are built on a pretty shaky foundation.
All you need to know.
https://mises.org/wire/abolish-federal-death-penalty
After almost twenty years without an execution, the Federal penal system has decided to proceed with a number of executions. NPR reported last month:
U.S. Attorney General William Barr has instructed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to change the federal execution protocol to include capital punishment, the Justice Department said.
Barr also asked the prisons bureau to schedule the executions of five inmates who have been found guilty of murder. According to the DOJ, the victims in each case included children and the elderly. In some of the cases, the convicted murderers also tortured and raped their victims.
Is the Death Penalty Ever Warranted?
I am not an anti-death-penalty absolutist. That is, in some cases where the testimony and physical evidence is overwhelming — and the crimes are particularly heinous — the death penalty could be warranted, at least in theory.
But given police corruption, incompetent prosecutors, and an over-reliance on circumstantial evidence in court, a great many death-penalty cases are built on a pretty shaky foundation. Moreover, it is extremely likely that innocent people have been executed in the United States whether through errors, or through outright fraud on the part of government officials.
In other words, the death penalty is serious business, and given that government bureaucrats can’t even run the DMV or the VA competently, there’s no reason to assume their criminal-justice skills are anything deserving of our unconditional trust.
Nevertheless, it is conceivable that the death penalty could be justly applied in some cases.
There’s No Need for a Federal Death Penalty
When examining the federal death penalty, however, it quickly becomes apparent that it is simply unnecessary — and should be completely abolished.
State laws already address the need to prosecute violent criminals. Murder, rape, assault, and other violent crimes are already illegal in every state of the Union. If Smith murders Wilson in, say, Pennsylvania, Smith can be tried for murder under Pennsylvania law. This is true even if Smith employs bombs, airplanes, or other tools associated with international terrorism.
There is no need for an extra layer of federal criminal justice. For example, Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of the Oklahoma City bombing, was certainly eligible to be tried for murder under Oklahoma law. Those who perpetrated 9/11 were certainly eligible to be tried for murder under New York and Virginia laws. But McVeigh was tried for the federal crime of killing a federal agent. Zacarias Moussaoui was prosecuted in federal court for his role in the 9/11 attacks, specifically “conspiracy to murder United States employees,” among other crimes.
Although these sorts of killings are certainly illegal in the states where they occur, the federal government insists on having prerogatives to prosecute defendants under federal law also. This is often done to add an additional layer of possible prosecution, and so that defendants can be prosecuted more than once for the same crime. This is a violation of the Bill or Rights, of course (as explained by Justice Neil Gorsuch) but federal courts have looked the other way on this loophole for years…
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