Die, Death Penalty, Die! The Libertarian Case Against Capital Punishment

Another week, another botched killing under
the legal euphemism of capital punishment. After
macabre screw-ups in
Arizona and Ohio, it was Nevada’s turn last week, when
double-murderer Joseph
Rudolph Wood III took about two hours to die. The specific
problem this time around was an apparently unreliable “cocktail” of
the drugs used in the lethal injection process.

But let’s face it: There’s no good way to
kill a person, even one as completely unsympathetic as Wood (he
killed his ex-girlfriend and her father, shooting them at
point-blank range). As a libertarian, I’m not surprised that the
state is so incompetent that it can’t even kill people efficiently.
But I’m far more outraged by the idea that anyone anywhere
seriously thinks the death penalty passes for good politics or sane
policy. It’s expensive, ineffective, and most of all, deeply
offensive to ideals of truly limited government.

That’s the start of my
latest Daily Beast column. I run through arguments
about how expensive capital punishment is, its ineffectiveness on
murder rates, and the reality that innocent people are on death row
before offering up this:

The state’s first role—and arguably its only one—is protecting
the lives and property of its citizens. In everything it does –
from collecting taxes to seizing property for public works to
incentivizing “good” behaviors and habits—it should use the least
violence or coercion possible. No matter how despicable murderers
can be, the state can make sure we’re safe by locking them up
behind bars for the rest of their—and our—lives. That’s not only a
cheaper answer than state-sanctioned murder, it’s a more moral one,
too.

Read the whole thing.