If and when they succeed in abolishing the death penalty even for such undeniably cold-blooded murderers as John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy or Timothy McVeigh, they’ll next target life imprisonment for abolition.

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Capital punishment’s righteous opponents often disingenuously offer the supposed “certainty” of life imprisonment without parole as a bogus alternative to execution. 

On the one hand, such activists decry the “cruelty” of execution.  On their other hand, they contradict that purported humanism by assuring us that a life behind bars somehow constitutes more excruciating retribution than execution.  In addition to undermining their professed humanist motive, that contention is facially absurd considering today’s plethora of amenities that America’s inmates enjoy.  No reasonable person would contend that prison is Club Med, but to pretend that a lifestyle of regular meals, cable television, air conditioning and libraries is worse than the electric chair or injection gurney is preposterous.  It certainly beats their victims’ fate. 

There’s a more fundamental flaw in the abolitionist campaign, however. 

Namely, capital punishment is merely a starting point for such activists, not an endpoint.  If and when they succeed in abolishing the death penalty even for such undeniably cold-blooded murderers as John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy or Timothy McVeigh, they’ll next target life imprisonment for abolition. 

Two recent and seemingly unrelated events illustrate this reality with unfortunate clarity:  a United States Supreme Court ruling announced this year, and Scotland’s release of the imprisoned Libyan bomber of Pan American flight 103 over Lockerbie. 

In May of this year, the Supreme Court ruled by a narrow 5-4 margin that we cannot under any circumstance sentence non-homicide defendants under the arbitrary threshold of 18 years of age to life in prison without parole.  Terrance Jamar Graham, the defendant in question, began a pattern of multiple violent robberies after turning 16.  During sentencing for his first armed robbery, Graham promised the judge, “I’ve decided to turn my life around,” adding, “I made a promise to God and myself that if I get a second chance, I’m going to do whatever it takes to get to the National Football League.” 

Instead, Graham used his second chance to commit more armed robberies, ultimately participating in a home invasion and high-speed police chase ending with a violent crash.  At trial, the exasperated judge cited an “escalation of pattern of criminal conduct” that could not be deterred, and imposed Graham’s life sentence because “the only thing I can do now is try to protect the community from your actions.”  Graham was simply a homicide waiting to happen. 

Safely removed from the everyday mayhem threatened by Graham and violent criminals like him, however, five justices on the Supreme Court took a different view. 

Despite the fact that fully 37 of 50 states (74%), the District of Columbia and Congress itself allow judges and juries to impose life imprisonment without parole under aggravated circumstances, and despite the fact that such punishment is not mentioned in the Constitution, let alone prohibited by it, the sanctimonious majority ruled that “the Constitution prohibits the imposition of a life without parole sentence on a juvenile offender who did not commit homicide.” 

Disturbingly, the majority rested its ruling partly upon its estimate that only ten other nations allow this sort of punishment.  Using that logic, perhaps we shouldn’t have become the only nation to land on the moon, but we digress. 

This decision signals not only the alarming inclination to accord American constitutional jurisprudence with what the rest of the world believes, but also the fact that liberals won’t stop at capital punishment in their crusade to redesign our criminal justice system.  If they were to succeed in abolishing the death penalty, which the Constitution explicitly references in its text, they would merely direct their efforts at construing life imprisonment as somehow “cruel and unusual.” 

Recent news regarding the Lockerbie bomber tragically illustrates that troubling reality. 

Last August, the Scottish government released convicted Pan Am flight 103 bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on “compassionate” grounds because he allegedly suffered from terminal cancer and death was “imminent.”  That al-Megrahi was spared the death penalty after killing 270 in the sky and on the ground in December 1988 was injustice enough.  Exacerbating that injustice by releasing him on so-called “humanitarian” grounds, however, defied credulity. 

To compound matters, al-Megrahi remains alive and well in Libya today, one year after his release.  Now, the U.S. is investigating reports that oil giant BP helped secure al-Megrahi’s release in order to win drilling contracts in Libya. 

Death penalty opponents savor claiming moral high ground.  When their crusade undermines justice by freeing homicidal maniacs and denying society its ability to appropriately incapacitate, deter and punish incorrigible criminals, true morality demands that we counter their ambitions.