R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.

About the author: R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is editor in chief of the American Spectator, a conservative journal of opinion.

The argument that capital punishment should be abolished because it is discriminatory and inconsistently applied is an evasive form of false reasoning. There is no evidence that innocents have been executed or that capital punishment is less fair than any other enforced laws and sentences. The death penalty should be abolished because it kills and because it is immoral—not because it is unfair.

When the state of Texas, governed by putative Republican presidential candidate Governor George W. Bush, executed Gary Graham for murder, I found myself in unlikely company. There I was, opposing the death penalty and pleading clemency for a very evil man...