The justice ain't no use; why the death penalty won't work in D.C.

• Author: DeParle, Jason

Jason DeParle is an editor of The Washington Monthly.

Why the death penalty won't work in D. C

The record-setting murder rate that has gained Washington top network billing has many city residents nervous, and I'm one of them. I frequently walk home late-past midnight-though lately I've been doing so less often and with greater unease. The bars were shutting down for the night a few months ago when my walk home took me past two speeding automobiles, with someone leaning out of the second and firing a gun at the first. It happened so suddenly that my ears kept insisting it was only a backfire, though my eyes, like those of other sidewalk gawkers, knew it was the real thing. Climbing into a taxi the next week, I gave the driver my address, only to have him explain that the corner outside my house had been the scene of a recent murder.

I was flipping the radio dial a few months ago when I caught a talk-show guest who suggested he had the solution to the District's crime problem: executions. The speaker was Gary Hankins of the D.C. Fraternal Order of Police, and he isn't confining his campaign to late-night radio. The E.O.P. has asked the city council to establish a death penalty for those who murder in order to advance another criminal activity-rape, say, or robbery, or (especially) the distribution of drugs. "It's not going to deter people ftom killing in anger," Hankins conceded. "[But] it will deter, I am convinced that it will deter, people who kill because of an assessment of human life versus profits in illegal activities." Criminals, Hankins said, know that "there is no chance of being executed in the District-none."

While, as a police officer, Hankins no doubt knows more about criminals than I do, the idea that "there is no chance of being executed in the District" is a strange one. After all, there have already been more than 130 murders in the District this year, and about half of them were drug-related-many "execution-style." By contrast, we've had only 107 executions in all of the United States during the past 20 years.

Little hangmen

Not only is the District's privately operated death penalty more prolific than the run-of-the-mill, legislated kind, it's also more swift and sure. No lengthy appeals. No last-minute whining from the ACLU. What's more, the executions take place in full public view, where the death penalty's didactic value is highest. This, after all, is what Hankins and others say they During some of the 19th century...