In a slightly misleadlingly-titled post ("Executing The Innocent", when there is no real doubt that the man in question was guilty of the charges against him) Matt Yglesias rails against the habit, in Texas, of giving criminals the death penalty for so-called felony murder charges, when the person in question is an accomplice to a murder, but did not actually kill anyone.
The Houston Chronicle has since reported that Texas Governor Rick Perry, in a display of liberal namby-pambyishness that former Executioner-In-Chief George W. Bush would undoubtedly decry, has decided to commute the sentence to life in prison. This seems like a pretty reasonable outcome, all told, and one of those reasons that you elect sensible people who, you know, understand and care about what's going on around them.
The death penalty is a tricky question. I am, in theory, in favor of it. I believe that there are crimes which are so awful, so heinous, that the death of the guilty party is the only just outcome. However, the penalty portion of the criminal justice system in the US is, well, criminally unjust. the crack/powder cocaine disparity. The disparity between the indictment-to-trial rates for whites and minorities, the disparity between conviction rates of whites and minorities, and imprisonment rates for said populations. The number of people sentenced to death who were later, through DNA evidence, shown to be altogether not guilty of the crimes for which they were sentenced.
In the end, on the question of the death penalty, I come to the same conclusion that I do for many conservative ideals: in a better world, or at least a world filled with better people, it's a fine idea. In the world we actually live in, it just doesn't work right, and needs to be scrapped.
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