Chez Chesler

New England's first execution in 45 years was carried out within the past hour Eugene Volokh blogged about the death penalty a few weeks ago. While there are people I'd gladly strangle with my own hands, I'm generally against capital punishment for the argument he didn't mention, that it brutalizes us. (He makes a similar argument against, that it's good to have limits on government, but here I'd suggest it's more directly to the benefit of the governed, if our government represents how we'd be in our ideal, rather than in our basest.) While he and others make strong arguments against being merciful to the unjust, I like the ideal that there are just some things that we don't do, and cold-blooded killing is one of them. I'm open to the cost and efficacy arguments. And I favor the talmudic notion that it's acceptable to have capital punishment on the books, but a court that puts even one person to death in seventy years is tyrannical. Volokh also asks why we pursue, punish, and sometimes execute old Nazis., and see the entry next below on Statutes of Limitations. Popularly it's said "there is no statute of limitations for murder." Suppose there were? How long would it be?

Consider the mathematician who is sentenced to death. He is told that he will be killed some time in the next n days, and, because this is a humanitarian court, to spare him some dread, he will be killed on a day when he does not expect it. He is sent back to his cell. He realizes that if he makes it to the nth day, he will know that since that is the last possible day to execute him, that that is the day. But since he can't be killed on a day when he expects it, he can't be executed on that day. This means that on the day before that, there are only two days open for his execution. Since it can't happen on the following day, the nth day, he must be executed on that day, the (n-1)th day. But since he will have realized this, he will expect it, and he can't be executed on that day either. By induction, this applies to the (n-2)th day and so far, all the way back. Secure in the knowledge that he can't be executed he goes to sleep. The next morning the jailer wakes him up and hangs him.

If the statute of limitations for murder is to be finite, we will want it to be particularly long. I don't think we'd want a murderer trying to beat out the last few months until 20 years, or his 65th or 80th birthday, trying not to get indicted until he can beat the rap on a technicality. Whereever there is a bright line, being just over that line will be perceived as a technicality.