Scott Turow on the lynching of Saddam Hussein and the role of capital punishment in a civilized society:

As to Saddam, I would argue that from a very restricted legal standpoint, his execution has little to do with the central juristic question of capital punishment, which asks whether it is ever right or moral for the state to take the life of a citizen as the price for violating the law. Saddam was not condemned for his misconduct as an ordinary Iraqi citizen. He was punished for his lawless abuse of state power. His execution raises the singular question of how to respond when a state actor runs amok. This distinction is what led the Israelis in 1962 to execute Adolph Eichmann, who had supervised the Nazi death camps, even though their constitution generally prohibits capital punishment and has kept them from executing even captured terrorists. But the manner in which Saddam’s execution was carried out proves yet again why capital punishment is always a parlous enterprise.

[...]

The only rigorous justification for the death penalty, I believe, is as a symbol of moral restoration. For ultimate evil, the argument goes, there must be ultimate punishment, because a society needs to make as bold and emphatic a statement as possible that some crimes go beyond the boundaries of what we can envisage as human.

The problem, however, is that once we accept that justification for capital punishment, it must be carried out in a way that preserves its force as a moral statement. We must faultlessly identify what constitutes ultimate evil, as opposed to some lesser infraction, and we must ensure that whoever is punished is guilty without question.

Of course, the reality of capital punishment in the United States is that it is still imposed with haunting randomness. Variables such as where the crime occurs (death sentences are more frequent in rural areas), the wealth of the jurisdiction (the sheer expense of death prosecutions occasionally deters them), the race of the victim (throughout the U.S., whites and blacks are sentenced to death far more often for killing white people than for killing black people), the native inclinations of the prosecutor, and the skill and resources of the defense all contribute to whether or not the death penalty is sought and imposed.

Not to mention the most disquieting fact, that horrible crimes often propel a rush to judgment that has led 123 Americans to be legally absolved of crimes for which they were initially sentenced to death. Because the law fails in these ways rigorously to identify ultimate evil, the value of the death penalty as a moral statement is largely vitiated in practice.