Today, more so than usual it seems, I'm being pelted with some of the less than truthful statements our adversaries employ. The one I'll discuss in this post is many years old; the reason I bring it up now is the fresh evidence of the degree of cynicism our opponents are willing to indulge.
For years, abolitionists have told us that we'll be just as safe, or perhaps safer, if we replace the death penalty with LWOP. This pitch has become so standard that it's now part of Gallup's polling on the question (emphasis added):
If you could choose between the following two approaches, which do you think is the better penalty for murder -- the death penalty or life imprisonment, with absolutely no possibility of parole.
In fact, the leaders of the abolitionist movement have zero intention of supporting life imprisonment with absolutely no possibility of parole. If there were any doubt about this, it was brought to an end by this article from the Marshall Project. The piece is partly about William Blake, a murderer convicted in New York, sentenced to LWOP (since that state has no death penalty), and held in solitary because of his dangerousness. The article's final paragraph states (emphasis added):
William Blake has said that while he cannot bring himself to take his own life, he would have welcomed the death penalty...had he known what a lifetime in solitary confinement would be like. Perhaps the time will come when people like Blake--and the American public--are not forced to choose among such monstrous alternatives. In the meantime, it will be a shame if people who oppose state-sponsored death continue to advocate for state-sanctioned torture.
My hat is off to the authors for, at least, their candor.
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