An Insignificant Minimum. That’s what Antonin Scalia calls innocents who are killed by the system of capital punishment. Imagine being the innocent person put to death; how comforting to know you are an “insignificant minimum.” Benjamin Franklin said that it is better a hundred guilty men go free than to let one innocent suffer; the ultimately reprehensible Scalia disagrees, apparently satisfied that few enough innocents are killed; naturally, he conveniently ignores the fact that it is a system virtually designed to hide the fact that innocents are killed. Why else purposefully destroy all evidence in a case when a criminal is executed, like a murderer disposing of his weapon and clothes after his crime?

If you are willing to kill for a belief, I think you should also be willing to die for it. If you approve of the death penalty, and you can honestly say that you would, as an innocent person, go to your execution believing that the death penalty was still just and your life an acceptable sacrifice, then that wins you the prize of not being an utter hypocrite. I have a feeling that most people who support capital punishment would not pass that test.

Even the Dallas Morning News, in the heart of Death Penalty territory, has changed its mind on this issue, as did Republican Illinois Governor George Ryan (though he had to wait just before leaving office to act on his belief).