The XX Factor: What women really think.

David Grann's Chilling Story of a Wrongful Execution

In a blockbuster New Yorker piece this week, David Grann persuasively demonstrates that in 2004, Texas executed an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham. It is chilling reading. Whatever you think about the death penalty, you can't want it to misfire. So how did we get here, to a legal regime in which a junk-science arson investigation was never questioned by indifferent defense lawyers, as Grann portrays them, nor by unsympathetic judges, parole board members, and Texas Governor Rick Perrry's office? ... (Read more in DoubleX)

Be the Man, Benedict

Deterrence Unplugged

Melinda, I think your instinct about the deterrent effect of the death penalty is about the same as mine. The Liptak article is incredibly interesting but makes the same point I learned in law school: Deterrence works if there is a reasonable chance the punishment in question will actually happen. Even my kids know that if they only get in trouble one time out of every 10,000 times they crayon the walls, it's totally worthwhile to take a chance and crayon the walls. We currently execute only a few dozen people a year.

But even if it were proved that the death penalty served as a terrific deterrent, it wouldn’t solve for the other fundamental problem: We don’t kill the worst offenders—we mainly kill only the most unlucky ones (the guys lumped with sleepy counsel, mixed-up DNA, tough-on-crime judges). Here’s a great new piece by Stuart Taylor on the recent decline of the death penalty that ties some of that together. For something to be a true deterrent, it needs to be understood to work. Even a rationally acting drunk killer on a spree can hardly game the odds of a capital punishment system that seems to punish indiscriminately.