In 2003 there were sixty-five people executed in the United States. In response to this fact, I have one brief question: why? Not “why did they have to die” but rather “why so few”? It strains credulity to suggest that only somewhere under a hundred people a year, out of the three hundred million in the United States, commit crimes for which they deserve to die. So, to death penalty supporters, I pose the following question: what’s stopping us from giving people exactly what so many richly deserve?

To begin with we need to ask the core question: how many people might, in an ideal world, be eligible for execution? To do this we need to look at the FBI’s Uniform Crime Statistics. In 2002 there were 16,204 cases of murder and manslaughter reported in the United States. For these murders there were 14,158 arrests.

One would think, leaving aside individuals who were released and acquitted, that at least 10% (or 1400) of the people arrested could easily be punished with death. I’d peg the number much higher than that, at around 10,000, even leaving out the twenty-eight murderers who were aged twelve or under. I don’t see any real reason why anyone convicted of first-degree murder ought to be allowed to live.

Now, we need to make ourselves certain of guilt so some individuals are going to have to be excluded from execution. So let’s figure that we’d have solid enough evidence on half of the 10,000 or five thousand to warrant their execution. Is that really enough?

Frankly, I think it’s time that we consider expanding the death penalty to second-offender rapists and pedophiles. Think about it for a second:

First; no one is going to get falsely convicted of rape or pedophilia twice.

Second; repeat offenders in these areas are almost never cured and, really, what worth are they to society even if some Doctor proclaims them so?

I can think of at least one other class of people worthy of execution: members of al-Qaeda. Congress should pass a law making mere membership in the terror group a capital offense.