In the midst of life we seek death

Have we been seduced into a phoney discussion about the death penalty in Australia in  this pre-election insanity?

I always feared that in a period of chaos or unclear decision making, where leaders are more intent on getting re-elected than leading, that we would get some opportunist who would lead us back to the unthinkable position of reintroducing the death penalty.

So here are ten early-morning reasons why the death penalty is wrong

1. What if you get the wrong person?  This is the most obvious and yet most easily overlooked reason. But the stories about this are legendary. Our legal system is not based on certainty it is based on probablility...beyond reasonable doubt. It may be OK in some people's mind to send people to jail when you are 90% sure of their guilt, and accept the risk that in one out of ten cases you may be wrong, at least the innocent can be set free. The dead cannot be brought back to life.
2. It diminishes the State Most of us understand that the State should try to be exemplary, it should respond to our aspirations rather than our fear or anger. This is a difficult enough path to tread at the best of times. We do know that we should be careful and respectful of human life. The State should be at the forefront of that particular aspiration, not the principal player in reaking vengeance. I think that if we look at States that have the death penalty, the US, China...we see that these great nations are not improved but that they are diminished by such poverty of policy.
3. It is playing God.  This is not a particularly religious argument. It is about deciding that in our society that the chief safeguard on human life is the presumption that no one person or institution will act to take away the life of another. Even in the face of guilt, we say that the sanctity of life is such that we do not validate another person's guilt, or the general poor application of the law by doing what that person has done (taking a life). We remove from individuals the presumption that this decision can be made without reference to higher moral authority, and with the inability to be able to certainly discern that with any absolute certainty...ie we do not know that we have the right to do this,  we don't do it. Wherever you get your moral authority from (we call it 'God' in this example) this argument is still cogent
4. It is a poor and selective reading of the Bible. This again may not be particularly religious. It is about the sort of narrow reading of authoritative sources to only back up our case. So we will tire of hearing "An eye for an eye", as Ghandi is oft (mis)quoted as saying "An eye for eye leads to a world of blind people".  The truth is that the appeal to these sorts of external authorities like the Bible is so often the desire to paint in black and white what is clearly in all shades of grey. We could equally well cite "vengeance is mine says the Lord, I  will repay" or "I desire  mercy not sacrifice". Let alone as we begin to unfold that we are not a Judaeo society alone, but that a Judaeo-Christian society is not stuck in the brutal land of the "lex talionis" but is one which seeks 'a more excellent way'. This begs the question that, in Australia at least, there are a myriad of other cultural, religious and moral influences that need to be weighed
5. It confuses the notion of what sentencing and punishment is about Again it is easy to think that we sentence people to punsh them for their crimes, but in a civilised society we also seek to rehabilitate. It is a civilised thing to do to work with those who have wronged even when we are angered by their guilt, and offended by their crimes (indeed particularly when this is so) to seek their rehabilitation. It is a big and presumptuous call to say that anyone is beyond rehabilitation. To often the temptation to do this is this simplistic response to see this as black and white. 
6. It is an expensive option Necessarily the death penalty must be subject to the highest level of appeal. The American system shows that this can be lengthy and expensive.
7. It may actually exacerbate the problem of terrorism rather than ease it For the life of me I cannot see how martyrs are actually deterred by the death penalty
8. It is socially and racially abusive and prejudicial Given the undeniable reality that aboriginal and poor people are over-represented in our prison systems, we must begin with the assumption that these people will also be more in danger of the death penalty than others. It is not that these people are more guilty (a ludicrously simplistic solution) but that there are other social reasons which need to be addressed. To throw the death penalty into this complex mix is to further compound the idea of injustice.
9. It is brutal, not civilised Not all will agree but in a world where Western Judaeo-Christian society so often takes the moral high ground, at some point we must acknowledge that the taking of life is a brutish act. Even if we allow another to deliver the injection, or pull the lever or fire the shot; we are promoting lack of compassion rather than mercy. Indignation, however righteous or not, does not justify such brutishness
10. It simply is not logical. In the end taking another person's life will do nothing. Nothing! to bring back a dead person. It will not ease the pain. It will not make any grieving person feel better. It may actually make matters worse