For those who believe that the death penalty is a brutal, wrong, racist, unconstitutional punishment, a primary argument against it is the availability of life without parole as a substitute. Should a defendant later be proven innocent, as happens with unfortunate regularity, they can be released from a sentence of LWOP. They can’t be resurrected.
Via Doug Berman, it appears that the argument in favor of LWOP rather than death has created a conflict.
This new press release provides further evidence that the pro-life-imprisonment advocacy by the anti-DP crowd is not appreciated by everyone. This release is headlined “The Other Death Penalty Project Announces Letter-Writing Campaign to Anti-Death Penalty Groups”, and here excerpts:
Today, thousands of prisoners around the country will be mailing letters to numerous death penalty abolitionist groups asking them to stop advocating for life without the possibility of parole as a supposedly humane alternative to lethal injection.The Other Death Penalty Project, a group comprised solely of prisoners serving life without possibility of parole — the other death penalty — categorically rejects this hypocritical position taken by too many death penalty abolitionists. Death at the hands of the state, whether by lethal injection or lethal imprisonment, is the death penalty.
Taken individually, it’s easy to understand how one could support both the abolition of the death penalty as well as life without parole. But from an intramural perspective, it’s clear that the anti-death penalty forces are undermining the anti-LWOP forces. To do otherwise is to take away their best argument, and to demand a stretch in reasoning, that not only should those who would otherwise be executed be allowed to live, but allowed to someday walk free, that much of the public would find wholly unpalatable. While they may believe it, they can’t sell it, and they know it.
The Other Death Penalty Project plans to call these anti-death penalty groups out to a public accounting by speaking for the close to 40,000 men and women sentenced to face “worse than death,” in the words of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. These prisoners live on the much bigger, much less well-publicized, death rows all around this country.The numbers don’t lie. Nearly 40,000 prisoners serving life without parole dwarfs the 3,279 on death row. Clearly, there’s more bang for the buck in fighting LWOP. On the other hand, the arguments against capital punishment are far stronger than those against LWOP. While some will argue that Bill Richardson’s assessment, that it’s “worse than death,” is true, that’s a value judgment that few of us are equipped to make. My sense is that neither side has the moral upper hand on this point.
Rarely are we faced with an intramural dispute between sides with which agree, but which present such a clear and insurmountable internal conflict. I don’t want to side against either position, but realize that taking such a position is just a cop out since one undermines the other. In the past, dealing individually with the issues arising from each sentence, it was unnecessary to pick sides. The Other Death Penalty Project forces the issue, and it’s understandable that they do.
While my gut is that life without parole, the death penalty prolonged, is a horrible fate, execution is worse. But it’s no longer as clear to me as it was before. This is a real dilemma.
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If we’re going to get rid of the death penalty, support from the middle is needed. Most centrist Americans aren’t going to sympathize with death row or LWOP inmates. If they’re going to be won over it will be via a mix of pragmatic appeals (the outrageous cost of capital prosecutions), moral revulsion at state-sponsored murder and the likelihood that the current system occasionally results in the execution of the innocent.
We might sympathize with the circumstances of those behind bars for LWOP, but those opposing the death penalty would be doing their cause a disservice to give any serious credence to these complaints.
There’s no question that LWOP is powerful tool in the abolitionist arsenal.
But it’s a problematic one, too. Pretending otherwise feeds into a charge of dishonesty – and sets us up to lose those whose argument is essentially a moral one.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but these are very tough questions.
I don’t find it problematic, but maybe I’m too much of a pragmatist. While a lot of people can see abolishing the death penalty in ALL cases, not even a small minority of people would take the same position with respect to LWOP.
Certainly no disagreement about that.
As a non American, who has actively campaigned against the death penalty all my adult life, I do feel that putting the LWOP issue on the same agenda isn’t helpful and needs to be separated from the issue of a death sentence.
As there are so many LWOP prisoners (there are only around 30 in the UK!)you will never get public backing for such a change. What might be more useful is to debate about the way such sentences are so liberally handed down. To me its indicative of failing judicial system that throws the key away for such a large proportion of its population.