AFTER my post on the death penalty yesterday, the news came that Major Nidal Hasan, who is charged with killing 13 people and attempting to kill 32 more in a shooting spree at Fort Hood in 2009, will face the death penalty. It was a timely reminder that although there are many cases where capital punishment is commonly considered unjust—where the evidence is inconclusive, for example, or the accused is a child—there are other cases where the moral intuition is more ambiguous. The Petit family murders are often quite reasonably cited as a case of such unimaginable brutality that the murderer deserves retribution. Someone wrote me an email after the Casey Anthony verdict saying that she wasn't so subsumed by that trial, but that the Christian Choate case makes her feel like she not only supports the death penalty but could give the injections herself. (Any of you who feel so inclined can use the comments to talk about the Anthony trial.)
I understand the reasoning in these situations and a more moderate view on the death penalty would be that its use should be reserved for cases where the guilt and the abuses are incontrovertible.
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