is stupidity a capital offense?

i was so excited about taking a course on capital punishment this semester. i was really looking forward to studying the death penalty on a theoretical and academic level. i have very strong opinions about the death penalty, as do a lot of people, but i think the intellectual debate is fascinating from all sides, and i welcomed this class as an opportunity to discuss the issues unemotionally.

and then, the class happened.

to be fair, i've only had three sessions so far (the class meets once a week, on monday mornings), but each session has gotten worse. it's not the material, it's not the professor, it's my classmates -- all of whom are 2- or 3Ls, people who should have gotten the whiny emotional shit out of their systems by now. unfortunately, not so much.

one of the cases we had to read for today's class was Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 US Supreme Court case in which the Court considered whether imposition of the death penalty on the defendants in the cases at bar was in violation of the Eigth Amendment. i.e., was the death penalty unconstitutionally "cruel and unusual"? a plurality held that it was, and as a result of the case, all states' death penalty statutes were overturned and approximately 600 death row prisoners were no longer on death row. the case is necessarily more complicated than this, but inclusion of greater detail is unnecessary for this blog post.

so, we're talking in class about whether the death penalty has been arbitrarily imposed, and rather than actually call on students whose hands were raised, the substitute professor (our usual prof wasn't able to be here today) says to "just talk", so it ends up being the same five people -- the ones who are able to talk the loudest -- comandeering the class discussion. and some of these people really shouldn't talk. ever. here are a few of the highlights from class today:

girl in front row, who perpetually looks confused, but confused in a way that apparently requires the scrunching of every muscle in her face: "well, i think we need to remember that these people are guilty, and when they commit a crime they assume the risk that the punishment will be handed down arbitrarily. i mean, like, sensitivity to the issues is good, but this hypersensitivity that these cases show really just blurs the issue that these people committed a crime." (in response to another student's comment about how sometimes death sentences depend on some combination of the prosecutor and jury)

she went on to suggest that o.j. simpson only got off because he was a high profile defendant.

another girl in my class was apparently dumbfounded at the suggestion that there are criminals out there who figure out how to work the system and get paroled, even though they aren't really reformed. wow. mind-blowing. duh.

i lost count of all the times people said, "i'm not necessarily saying this is my view, but..." jesus, people -- stop being so afraid!

ugh. and we never actually talked about the meat of the case! in the furman decision, ALL NINE JUSTICES wrote separately. it's really a fascinating opinion! even though i'm happy with the plurality's outcome, i think some of the rationale that the justices used is flawed (on both sides), and i wish we could have spent some time dealing with the case, at least to situate it in the overall capital punishment jurisprudence, instead of talking about various people's discussion papers that were posted on the online classroom site for the class.

sigh, i'm sure had my regular professor been there, things would have been a bit less willy nilly. and his reason for missing class is truly tragic -- his four year old daughter was just diagnosed with leukemia and was beginning her chemotherapy today -- so i certainly don't begrudge him his absence.

i just wish i could stand up and tell my classmates to stop acting like fools who lack the ability to think. and considering that my nicotine withdrawal has got me a bit on edge, i suppose it's lucky that i just kept my mouth shut.