Squaring accounts

Arguing against the death penalty on grounds it's ineffectual or uneconomic assumes that's its purpose

Essay by James Krohe Jr.
Illustrations by Mike Cramer

Oh, well. Close enough for government work.

As of mid-March, almost as many of Illinois' condemned prisoners have been freed as executed under the state's current capital punishment statute. Twelve men have been put to death since 1977, 11 have been set free in the past decade, either because charges were dropped, they won acquittals upon retrial or new evidence was discovered.

Except among professionally outraged lobbyists, the news that the state of Illinois sends innocent people to Death Row seems not to have excited much outrage. Not even Illinois' polite middle class, whose idea of a miscarriage of justice is getting an undeserved parking ticket, has demanded a moratorium on executions, much less abolition. As for the state's sages, their proposals for reform, tellingly, would not eliminate the penalty but simply improve the process by which it is administered.

Which raises a question: Why does a majority of adults in the United States endorse the state's authority to kill its nastier criminals? Not only