Turn the Question Around

Death penalty debate in Maryland, with a new Democrat governor. Gregory Kane, Baltimore Sun:

In your address to the legislative committees, governor, you posed a question yourself: Would we want to risk a member of our family being wrongly executed? Let's turn that question around and apply it to a Maryland with no death penalty.

Let's say there's an inmate serving life without parole. He has it in for a corrections officer, one like McGuinn, whose only fault was doing his job the right way. This inmate knows three things:

• He's got life with no parole.

• Maryland has no death penalty.

• He can kill the corrections officer and not get punished for it because he knows he has already received the maximum penalty Maryland allows.

Now, governor, would you want one of your relatives working as a corrections officer under those conditions?

I have gone back and forth on the death penalty. Because I am pro-life it would seem consistent to be anti-death penalty. But this is very persuasive. Kind of like how do you deter people who are willing to blow themselves up.