Jeffrey Alan Miron Quotes
What makes someone too mentally ill to be executed? There is no clean answer to this question. But the attempt to answer it consumes substantial resources. If capital punishment had a demonstrable impact on crime, it might make sense to struggle with such a difficult balancing. But any deterrent effect is trivial at best, so the effort devoted to these decisions is wasted.
Jeffrey Alan Miron, Economist, Essayist & Blogger, Insanity and Capital Punishment, June 4, 2006
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This is the oldest test in Western jurisprudence as to whether a person was insane at the time he/she committed a crime. In England, the House of Lords functions as the Supreme Court.
The Prime Minister was complaining about a British high court decision that ruled that a person who had committed premeditated murder was insane at the time of the murder and therefore not criminally responsible. Many politicians complain about the same situation today. This quotation however was about the original MacNaghten defendant for whom the legal rule of insanity defense was named.
Wade was urging the Prince to abolish the Death by 1000 Cuts {641825} and simply rely on beheading the form of execution for “lesser” crimes. Note that the Prince’s fears and arguments parallel the same given by modern proponents of the Death Penalty—without it criminals would not be controlled and instability would ensue.
This is one of the earliest views that insane people should not be criminally punished for their acts. To a great extent, Constantine and his contemporaries believed that insanity was the work of the Devil or demons and therefore one should not sympathize with the condition either.
Although this is generally followed as a legal principle in America, states like Texas have executed felons who most other jurisdictions would see as Coke’s “mad man.”
He was one of the longest serving District Attorneys in America, He also served the largest jurisdiction of a District Attorney. When he first was elected DA of Manhattan there were over 600 murders a year. When he retired, there were only about 60, a 90% reduction. Yet, his experience was that capital punishment was useless in deterring murder. He had many other techniques far more effective.
This Pennsylvania prison was supposedly a “modern” reform in law enforcement. Rather than work gangs or mandatory factory work, this was the first “penitentiary” in America. The guilty convicts would be in a small cell for all but 1 hour or less a day, and the only thing in the cell other than soap and a toothbrush was a Bible. The convict was supposed to spend his sentence reading th Bible and being penitent for his crimes. It destroyed most inmates mentally until the Supreme Court Ruled total solitary confinement was unconstitutional. There are a fee high security prisons today where there is no social contact allowed the inmates and their constitutionality is being litigated based on Miller’s 1890 opinion. Another point that this quotation illustrates is that sometimes reform efforts produce a situation that was worse than before.
Jeffrey Alan "Jeff" Miron is an American economist. He served as the chairman of the Department of Economics at Boston University from 1992 to 1998, and currently teaches at Harvard University, serving as a Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Harvard's Economics Department. Miron holds the position of Director of Economic Policy Studies at the Cato Institute.
