Latest death penalty bill is grotesque, gruesome grandstanding

Leave it to State. Sen. Tom Reynolds, R-Pluto, to come up with a death penalty bill that most death penalty advocates probably won't even support.

He's looking for sponsors for a bill to reinstate the death penalty in Wisconsin for committing all of the following three offenses against the same victim: 1) first or second-degree sexual assault; 2) first-degree homicide; and 3) disfigurement, dismemberment, or mutilation.

It is tailored, of course, to fit the Steven Avery case. It probably won't be called "Steven's Law," though. Sponsors always like to name these things for the victim, so it probably would be known as "Teresa's Law," for Teresa Halback.

But it will not be anybody's law. I don't believe this grotesque, gruesome grandstanding will even pass in this legislature, where the wingnuts rule the day.

But you never know.

The chief argument for the death penalty is that it will deter others from committing similar crimes, once they have witnessed other criminals being drawn and quartered. This may well be apocryphal, but it is said that in Olde England, in the days when pickpockets were hanged, that more pockets were picked at hangings than at any other time. It's a good story, anyway.

But let's consider the deterrence of the Reynolds bill. Since a criminal has to commit three heinous crimes on the same victim, maybe it would make some of them only commit two out of three.

Murder and dismemberment would be OK, as long as there was no sexual assault.

Sexual assault and dismemberment also would fall short of the death penalty, so long as the dismemberment didn't cause death.

A rapist and murderer would escape the noose/ax/injection/burning, too, if he stopped sort of dismemberment and "only" raped and killed the victim.

So, in a modest way, perhaps there would be some deterrence. Not that many people hack up their victims anyway, but maybe this would deter a few. Highly doubtful, though, wouldn't you say?

Is this subject in bad taste?

Is it my post or Reynolds's bill that makes you queasy?

It should be unsettling. There is a very good reason Wisconsin has outlawed the death penalty since 1853, as Badger Blues reminds us.

Reynolds, of course, is not the first politician to pander on the issue. Jeff Wagner, now a Republican radio host, used -- and I mean used -- the distraught father of a young girl who had been murdered, featuring him in a television commercial to attack Jim Doyle. Doyle, the attorney general, courageously opposed the death penalty in the 1994 race when Wagner, his challenger, used it against him. Doyle won, as you may recall.

Opponents of the death penalty argue, among other things, that we are certain to execute some innocent people.

No matter, says a noted conservative, Catholic, "pro-life" member of the intelligentsia:

John McAdams, a Marquette University political science professor, said death penalty opponents have inflated the number of death row inmates who are exonerated and have understated the level of public support for it.

"The mass public isn't particularly deterred by the notion there may be some innocent people on death row," said McAdams, a proponent of capital punishment. "No public policy works perfectly . . . so they're realistic about policy."

So the state murders a few innocent people. Hey, nothing's perfect. Win a few, lose a few.

I've heard McAdams' philosophy expressed by grunts in Vietnam: "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out."

The difference was, the grunts weren't serious.