I’m a socially liberal, fiscally conservative Democrat. I don’t look at the death penalty as punishment.

Imagine the body of society as an actual body, with crime some dread disease. Suppose one of your adrenal glands was failing. If there were medication that could return the gland to its normal function, that would be your first line of treatment, wouldn’t it? This is like putting someone in prison for a finite term.

It’s not a good analogy, because there isn’t a lot done in prison to see that those there are returned to the “normal function” of a member of the body. There should be, but there isn’t.

However, if the adrenal gland cannot be returned to normal function, and if it actively harms your body, the only solution is surgery. You remove the bad part from the body.

I have no theoretical issues with the death penalty. Robert Alton Harris was executed, and I’m glad. William George Bonin was executed, and I’m glad. I have two issues with the actual performance of the death penalty. First, I believe there are places where a person is not adequately defended in court, which is wrong. Second, in many cases, the death penalty is more expensive to carry out than LWOP. In California, where I lived for many years, the death penalty requires an automatic appeal to the State Supreme Court. Death penalty prisoners are housed separately, and aren’t forced to share a cell. It can be much safer out of general population. Due to the amount of time a person can spend on death row (Harris was convicted in 1979 and executed in 1992; Clarence Ray Allen was sentenced in 1981 and executed in 2006) I feel that it is a waste of tax dollars to sentence someone to death in California. I do not feel this way about the federal system.