I was just reading this story about a man who allegedly had sexual relations with a two month old girl and distributed pictures of him doing it over the internet. It revived for me an idea I’ve been meaning to write about at length for a while.

I’m for the death penalty, as everyone around here knows. And lately I’ve been thinking that maybe the penalty should be applied to crimes other than murder. I’d certainly be open to the suggestion that child rapists should get the chair. But I don’t really want to run through the crimes I think deserve the ultimate penalty (note: not even I think those responsible for Jar-Jar Binks deserve the gallows).

Rather, I’m trying to work through the philosophical justification for expanding the death penalty. In the 19th century, this wasn’t a difficult issue. We hung people for barn-burning and horse-stealing because we didn’t have prisons, because we understood the utility of maintaining order etc. But for a host of reasons we detached capital punishment from all other crimes except murder and treason (am I missing any?). I sincerely doubt we could ever reverse that trend without the support of the left. And, since the popular front mentality of the left requires unanimity on these sorts of issues, it’s unlikely it would ever happen. Still, I could imagine a fairly compelling argument for support the death penalty in African countries for crimes like the poaching of the great apes. I don’t think apes have rights or that they are more “valuable” than humans. But if you could make the case in 19th century America that horse-theft is a capital crime, surely you can make an equally compelling case about the destruction of gorillas (or pandas or Siberian tigers) in the 21st. The argument would have to be both moral and utilitarian focusing both on the aesthetic as well as the economic. A tiger, for example, is a glorious creation of God and its lost would be a crime of historic proportions — and a huge economic blow to countries dependent on tourism. Something like that.

As for executing the very worst category of child rapists, that argument sort of writes itself.

The obvious downside to all of this is that whenever the left expands its reasons for killing people, it goes way too far so perhaps its best to keep the genie in the bottle.

Just something I’ve been noodling.