I was a big fan of  Adam Liptak’s  columns in the New York Times.  But my fanaticism has worn thin.  This week, it wore out.

First, I wondered who Adam Liptak is.  Obviously, he’s a guy writing a column for the Times, but what does he bring to the table that justifies him writing a column for the Times.  After all, it’s a pretty influential gig, and frankly I’d never heard of him except for his column.  So, I did what any self-respecting hard-working lawyer would do to investigate a subject.  I clicked on his  biography page on the Times website.  This is what I learned:

Mr. Liptak returned to Yale for a law degree, graduating in 1988. During law school, he worked as a summer clerk in the The New York Times Company’s legal department. After graduating, he spent four years at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, a New York City law firm, as a litigation associate specializing in First Amendment matters.

In 1992, he returned to The Times’s legal department, spending a decade advising The Times and the company’s other newspapers, television stations and new media properties on defamation, privacy, news gathering and related issues, and he frequently litigated media and commercial cases.

Yale.  Cahill Gordon.  The Times.  Okay, he’s no dummy. 

So why did he write the piece,  “ Does Death Penalty Save Lives? A New Debate “?  When I first saw this piece, I thought to myself that this is big, huge even, given the political climate around the death penalty and coming from none other than the Grey Lady herself.  But as I read the piece, and read it again, I realized that there  was here.  It was designed to incite dispute and inflame passions, but it didn’t say anything.  My problem is that Liptak has raised tossed a red flag in front of a bull over nothing.  Who the hell is this guy?  Oops, I already asked that, didn’t I?

Nowhere in this column does Liptak provide the slightest clue about the basis for, and hence the merit of, the economists’ claim that there is a decrease in homicide rates commensurate with an increase in executions.  It’s an incendiary claim, and it cannot be made without showing the evidence.  But Liptak presents the bald conclusion, bolstered by somebody’s personal political anti-death penalty agendas (to show lack of bias), and gives us zero information as to how this inflammatory conclusion was reached.  Who the hell is this guy?  Yeah, I know.

On the back end of the piece, Liptak includes this nugget:

The studies have been the subject of sharp criticism, much of it from legal scholars who say that the theories of economists do not apply to the violent world of crime and punishment. Critics of the studies say they are based on faulty premises, insufficient data and flawed methodologies.

So is there any validity to this study that just tossed a match into an ammo dump?  Who knows?  After all, these are economists, not legal scholars, and we can’t begin to discern the legitimacy of their studies from the column.  Maybe they have something.  Maybe not.  But don’t throw the debate open without putting the beef on the table.

So let’s bottom line it.  Liptak writes in the New York Times that there is a real debate based upon scientific studies that the death penalty may save lives.  But there is nothing in this story upon which the reader can begin to decide whether this is true or total nonsense.  If you’re going to inflame a controversial situation, then at least write a story with some substance.  Don’t just throw bombs.

I am really not an Adam Liptak fan at the moment.