Okay, I’ve sent off my syndicated column. And, yes, I made those paragaphs less clunky. Now, assuming this isn’t a private argument I’d like to make a quick point.

Rod, when you say the death penalty must be error free it seems to me you make yourself operationally anti-death penalty. I see a parallel with NR’s position on the drug war. I’ve asked both Ramesh and Rich if NR would be in favor of the drug war if NR’s editors thought the war was winnable. They both said, more or less, “I don’t know, maybe.” In other words, theirs is not so much a moral objection to the drug war as a practical one. The obviously high costs of prohibition, in their minds, exceed the benefits. (If I’m mischaracterizing their positions I await their clarifications).

If you think the cost of a single innocent life is too high to justify capital punishment, in other words if you think it must be perfect in every respect, then you might as well come out against the death penalty because otherwise you’ll have to argue for a perfect government program and that is an untenable position.

But keep in mind government finds acceptable rates of accidental deaths in all sorts of areas. From friendly fire in the military to deaths on our highways to extremely rare and fatal drug side effects. Surely even one child’s death is a tragedy, but we know for a fact that roughly 50 young children die every year from drowning in 5 gallon buckets, mostly in their back yards. But we don’t ban buckets. And that’s roughly the same number as the number of cases of accidental gun deaths among small children, and we do not require child-safe bucket locks (Note to parents: You can childproof your bucket by putting a hole in the bottom).

If you take it as a matter of principle that the death penalty is a social good, then you must be willing to accept some level of error to achieve that social good. It would be tragic if we executed an innocent man — hasn’t happened yet — but I would still take a mend it don’t end it approach in response (unless I was the one executed). There’s nothing wrong with working very hard to keep that level as low as conceivably possible, but the only way to guarantee no errors is to abolish capital punishment entirely.