Andy Ho's article in the papers today, giving what he purports to be the moral case for the death penalty, reads rather strangely. He starts by proposing a thought experiment about face-to-face killing (with all the bloodied hands it entails) and killing in the abstract, and then quotes a study that shows that most of us are much more comfortable with the latter.

It makes for interesting reading, because he continues to quote quite a few more observations showing this or that. They range from simplistic observations showing a correlation between Britain's abolition of capital punishment for most crimes except treason and its subsequent rising murder rates, and similarly, Northern Ireland's abolition of the death penalty, and its increased jailhouse murder rates. To that, I can only say that correlation is not equivalent to causation. For more on that, go here.

Taken together with an anecdote about Paul Tibbets, a thought experiment, and an opinion about what the majority of the public would think in a hypothetical hostage scenario, all this forms an argument that points surely to the conclusion that shows that the death penalty can be morally justified.

That's the funny thing. If Andy was really making a moral case for capital punishment, why does he have to resort to citing this or that as a crutch? A moral case that would be worthy of consideration would be made on entirely a priori basis, i.e. without resorting to empirical proof. For example, one does not need to cite any academic studies to show that rape is wrong. The same demand is made of anyone who says he or she has a moral case to make.

It is not really Andy's fault, but what really gets me is this: it is not exactly as if our government was undecided about the issue, and only made up its mind when these studies he quoted came out, is it? Did the whiteshirts postpone passing any law related to the death penalty before these studies were published?

Of course they did not. The government has already made its mind up ages ago. There is no open-eyed curiosity about the viability of the death penalty here; Andy is merely citing evidence to support the government's foregone conclusion. If that apologist wants to be taken seriously, he will have to do better than that.