Soccer Dad

The NY Times supports the death penalty

The New York Times today is bothered by the fact that Justice Scalia objected to the fact that the Supreme Court even heard the case of the constitutionality of executing minors:

Justice Scalia dissented bitterly in this month's juvenile death penalty case. Reasonable minds may ask, as he did, whether the majority opinion relied too heavily on the norms of international law in deciding what punishment does not meet modern standards of decency. But Justice Scalia disagreed not merely with the majority's conclusion that offenders cannot be executed for crimes committed when they were under the age of 18, but with the very fact that the court was even considering the question. "By what conceivable warrant can nine lawyers presume to be the authoritative conscience of the nation?" he asked.

But just the other day, the Times felt that all had been done judicially in considering the Schiavo case:

They also challenged the careful decisions by Florida's trial and appellate courts, based largely on the testimony of her husband that their daughter would have chosen to die rather than live indefinitely in such condition.

I agree with the Times that Congress getting involved is a bad thing. Not because I don't think that they're being noble, but because I really don't want a Democratic Congress interfering in things that I hold dear. Once a boundary is breached - no matter how worthy the cause - there is no end to the mischief that can be done.
But consider the Times editorial on the Schiavo case. The editors call the Florida judicial decisions careful. That's because the Times agrees with those decisions.
But imagine, for a moment, that we were dealing with a death penalty. A young man - say an underage criminal - was convicted of killing someone and sentenced to death on the testimony of an interested witness. Say that witness was an accomplice who got a lighter sentence due to his testimony. Would the Times consider such a death penalty decision that is upheld in such a case "careful?" Or would they question the reliability of the testimony because they'd assume it would be tainted by the witness's desire to escape the death penalty?
Yet in the Schiavo case, the Times is satisfied that the interested testimony of Michael Schiavo is definitive.
I'm not going to claim that I know what Michael Schiavo is going through. However choosing to starve his wife on his testimony that this is what she would have wanted to die in these circumstances is reckless in the extreme. Michael Schiavo is not disinterested; he wants (understandably) to get on with his life. But to do that an innocent woman must be starved to death. The Times clearly has more compassion for a 16 year old who brutally murders a neighbor or two than it has for a helpless woman whose life its editors have decided is not worth living.
This isn't about allowing nature to take its course with someone whose autonomic nervous system has shut down. This is about killing someone who is alive in a diminished capacity. There's a difference. The Times seems unaware of that.
UPDATE: Life-of-Rubin is more strident than I am. And he says it well. Biur Chametz makes the "Don't make a federal case out of this" case better than I do. Kesher Talk has a good roundup on the subject, especially to a guest blogger at Roger L. Simon.

Posted by SoccerDad at March 21, 2005 09:48 AM | TrackBack