Wonderful Sentiment, Wrong Solution

The dilemma posed by Proposition 114, which would make the murder of certain peace officers a capital crime, recapitulates the old problem of means and ends.

The measure’s goal--protecting the lives of the men and women willing to put themselves at risk so that all of us may live in safety--is something all Californians support. However, the means proposed to achieve that end--capital punishment--is something we oppose for reasons of principle and practicality.

The public’s highest interest in this issue is to deter potential murderers of any peace officer. But, while reasonable people may differ on the intrinsic morality of legal executions, there is a convincing body of quantitative evidence that the death penalty is not a deterrent.

Just two years ago, a United Nations study of capital punishment worldwide found that “the evidence as a whole still gives no positive support to the deterrent hypothesis.” Government-sponsored studies in the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan, as well as social science research in this country, have reached identical conclusions. Since 1977, the United States has executed 107 people and put more than 2,000 others under sentence of death. None of this has had a measureable impact on the homicide rate.

The impetus for Proposition 114 derives from the 1978 initiative that restored the death penalty in California. Unusually baroque, even by the labyrinthine standards of this state’s ballot measures, that measure specified the so-called “special circumstances” that trigger capital prosecution. One of them is murder of a peace officer engaged in his or her normal duties, when the defendant knew--or reasonably should have known--that the victim was, in fact, an officer. The various classes of peace officers--city police, the Highway Patrol, for example--were listed in the state Constitution as among those officers entitled to special protection under the 1978 measure.

Since 1978, additional statutes establishing new categories of peace officers have been passed. Most are people like safety officers who patrol public property and state investigators. Proposition 114 would add these new peace officers to the list of those whose murder is a capital crime.

The organized opposition to 114 comes mainly from those who believe it is wrong to create special classes of people whose death is held more serious under law.

Our opposition differs in that we do believe that peace officers are special people doing vital work under difficult circumstances.

As such, they deserve special status. However, we oppose imposition of the death penalty under any circumstances. We would strongly favor a sentence of life without possibility of parole for murderers of peace officers, if such a measure were proposed.