Comments on: Musings on a Slow Day http://www.jdjournal.com/2009/11/19/musings-on-a-slow-day/ Legal Industry News Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:33:34 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 By: Anonymous http://www.jdjournal.com/2009/11/19/musings-on-a-slow-day/comment-page-1/#comment-21248 Anonymous Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:17:37 +0000 http://www.jdjournal.com/?p=17978#comment-21248 I am not morally against capital punishment. I am perfectly fine with a state or the federal government executing anyone who has committed or is directly responsible for the murder of another individual. Yet, I am completely against capital punishment the way it is implemented in the U.S. for one reason and one reason only: it costs too much money. The government spends much less money on a trial where the death penalty is not an option, including all of the costs for the lifetime incarceration of the defendant, than it does on a trial where the death penalty is an option. This is because of all of the necessary safeguards to ensure that a person is not mistakenly put to death, such as automatic psychological evaluations and automatic appeals as of right. Why should society spend so much money on putting a criminal defendant to death when it would be cheaper to try him and lock him up for the rest of his life? In the case of KSM, this is a perfect reason why the Administration should not have opted for a civilian trial. KSM should have been tried in a military tribunal in Guantanamo and executed. And it would have been a lot cheaper. And please, no one tell me that this trial will show the rest of the world that we are a country of laws. What about the detainees who bombed the U.S.S. Cole? Why are they getting military trials? If military trials are good enough for them, they are good enough for KSM. If federal civilian trials are good enough for KSM, then they are good enough for all of the detainees. We can't have a system where the Attorney General selects where the trial will be held based on the amount of evidence we have against the defendants. I am not morally against capital punishment. I am perfectly fine with a state or the federal government executing anyone who has committed or is directly responsible for the murder of another individual. Yet, I am completely against capital punishment the way it is implemented in the U.S. for one reason and one reason only: it costs too much money. The government spends much less money on a trial where the death penalty is not an option, including all of the costs for the lifetime incarceration of the defendant, than it does on a trial where the death penalty is an option. This is because of all of the necessary safeguards to ensure that a person is not mistakenly put to death, such as automatic psychological evaluations and automatic appeals as of right. Why should society spend so much money on putting a criminal defendant to death when it would be cheaper to try him and lock him up for the rest of his life?

In the case of KSM, this is a perfect reason why the Administration should not have opted for a civilian trial. KSM should have been tried in a military tribunal in Guantanamo and executed. And it would have been a lot cheaper.

And please, no one tell me that this trial will show the rest of the world that we are a country of laws. What about the detainees who bombed the U.S.S. Cole? Why are they getting military trials? If military trials are good enough for them, they are good enough for KSM. If federal civilian trials are good enough for KSM, then they are good enough for all of the detainees. We can’t have a system where the Attorney General selects where the trial will be held based on the amount of evidence we have against the defendants.

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