State Rep. Jack Brandenburg, R-Harrison Township, is right - we need to do something to deter murder. As long as people have been killing people, however, the question has loomed as to how murder can be circumvented and how the next one can be prevented.
Institutionally, The State News has championed and supported Michigan's ban on the death penalty. We're proud that our state has been a long-time adversary of capital punishment - 158 years and counting - and we're satisfied that a petition to potentially reinstate the death penalty failed to meet its July 5 deadline. We sincerely hope that we'll be able to report the ban as 159 years and counting this time next year.
Motivated by the Feb. 16 killings of Detroit police officers Matthew Bowens and Jennifer Fettig, the petition called for the use of capital punishment when a law enforcement or corrections officer has been killed. The drive to file 317,747 valid Michigan signees stalled, and Michigan voters will not see the death penalty on a state ballot until, at least, 2006.
Last March, Jennifer Fettig's mother Kathy told The State News that the death penalty was the only true form of justice in murder cases. We cannot begin to fathom the tremendous sense of loss that accompanies any senseless murder, be it the grief of the victim's loved ones or the bereavement which faces the accused. What we can do is argue that the death penalty does not deter murders from occurring, nor is it an effective method of prevention.
In 2002, the FBI reported that the murder rate in southern states increased by 2.1 percent, while the murder rate in northeastern states decreased by nearly 5 percent. Southern states account for 82 percent of capital punishment deaths since 1976 - northeastern states account for less than 1 percent of those deaths. Of the 12 states in the union that do not employ the death penalty, the northeast is home to four of them. There is no single state in the South with a ban.
In aggregate, the death penalty is ineffective in deterrence. There are many like Kathy Fettig who believe it to be a true form of justice, but in the scales of balance, the death of one is never adequately justified by another form of murder. Innocent people have been put to death for crimes they did not commit. As Mahatma Gandhi said, "an eye for an eye and soon the world will be blind."
With further specification, we also find this particular petition to be a debasing assessment of the value of life. If only cop killers can be put to death, does that suggest the murder of a child inflicts less harm on society? A life is a life, a spirit is a spirit and a loss is a loss. No single life is more important than another, despite profession or propensity to serve society.
Residents of Michigan should be proud to live in a state that does not contribute to an unjust measure of punishment. We will not live to see a society clean of needless loses of life, but we should all take solace in the fact that until that happens, Michigan is fighting the good fight.
