I would like to comment on the Editorial Board’s death penalty opinion published in the Oct. 8 edition of the Daily. This piece represents the Editorial Board’s daily display of ineffective arguments and base journalism.

The most interesting and inadvertently factual idea presented in the piece is the notion that the death penalty debate is rooted in moral arguments.

However, the Editorial Board feels the need to disregard all moral arguments once it concludes that such arguments cannot sway anyone’s opinion. It then resorts to the lowest form of debate (slinging mud at death penalty proponents) in defining its own views.

Let us examine some of the arguments put forth in the death penalty piece.

First, we are presented with the notion that Americans can be likened to Iraqi dictators because our societies both choose to exercise the death penalty. Obviously, concludes the Editorial Board, the “advanced” Europeans must be right since the rate of violent crime is much lower there than in the United States. However, a causal relationship between the presence of the death penalty and the rate of violent crime is not substantiated with a single piece of evidence. Are we to believe that violent criminals will stop committing crimes if only we were to repeal the death penalty in America? This doesn’t make any sense.

Second, the Editorial Board likens death penalty proponents to savages by giving the example of demonstrators outside prisons. Perhaps those demonstrators really are savages, but the question is whether they accurately represent the 78 percent of the American public that supports the death penalty.

The answer is no, but the Editorial Board knowingly promotes stereotyping of death penalty proponents.

Lastly, the Editorial Board makes the claim that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent and that it has become as much an embarrassment to our political discourse as slavery was in the last century.

I don’t see a link between the two issues, and one cannot be derived from the piece because no factual evidence is presented to substantiate the claim.

Whatever its reason for making this claim, it serves only to degrade the character of death penalty proponents by associating them with slavery. I feel the death penalty piece is but one example of the Editorial Board’s continuous disregard for standards of debate and lack of logic and evidence.

I would propose a litmus test for future opinion pieces based on the following question: “Could the editorial board’s arguments on this issue convince a reasonable person to switch sides of the debate?”

A cursory examination of the death penalty piece shows that it exhibits only broken logic and a complete lack of evidence.

I would urge the Editorial Board to consider thinking a little more about the opinions it presents each day. Blanket statements and baseless opinions add nothing to the debate on any issues relevant to our political discussion.

Matthew J. Pierce

Graduate student

Electrical engineering