Is the developing moratorium on executions risking innocent lives?
As noted here, another stay of a scheduled Texas execution further suggests that the Baze lethal injection SCOTUS case is going to lead to a de facto national moratorium on lethal injection executions. Kent Scheidegger at Crime & Consequences has this notable reaction: “There is substantial reason to believe that moratoriums kill innocent people. See Dale O. Cloninger & Roberto Marchesini, Execution Moratoriums, Commutations and Deterrence: the case of Illinois, Applied Economics, vol. 38, no. 9, pp. 967-973 (2006).”
Relatedly, Kent has this new post spotlighting this new paper on the continuing debates over the new death penalty deterrence literature. Kent makes this spot-on observation about the deterrence debate:
Nothing induces hysteria in the anti-death-penalty crowd as much as the new generation of studies confirming that the death penalty does, indeed, have a deterrent effect and save innocent lives when it is actually enforced. There is good reason for the reaction. Deterrence is the strongest argument for the death penalty in terms of persuading people who are otherwise on the fence.
The controversy and reactions surrounding the provocative paper by Cass Sunstein & Adrian Vermeule, entitled “Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? Acts, Omissions, and Life-Life Tradeoffs,” certainly support Kent’s observation here. That paper also has me wondering whether Sunstein and Vermeule would contend that the Supreme Court (or even Congress) has a moral obligation to prevent the risk to innocent lives that might possibly result from a de facto national moratorium on lethal injection executions. At the very least, I feel comfortable arguing that the Supreme Court has a moral obligation to adjudicate the Baze case ASAP.
Some related posts on the death penalty deterrence debate and the lethal injection moratorium: