There are no more emotionally gutting crimes than those that involve violence against children, especially the very smallest children. These crimes are a violation of primordial innocence, and there are almost never extenuating circumstances that mitigate them, let alone justify them.
And so it is right and just to feel outrage at stories like the gruesome death of six-week-old Leon Katz in Shadyside in June, and to demand harsh justice. The death penalty, however, is never the justice that is called for.
District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr.’s announcement last week that he would seek the death penalty against alleged murderer Nicole Elizabeth Virzi may provide a glimmer of satisfaction to the victim’s family and to the public. But it will only extend the prosecutorial process possibly by decades, while achieving nothing of value except the satisfaction of vengeance. It will protect no one while costing taxpayers millions of dollars. It will not undo the horror visited upon baby Leon, but it will make the people party to another horror altogether.
No punishment is reversible, but capital punishment is uniquely permanent. For this reason, courts have instituted numerous safeguards to protect against executing the innocent. Capital trials require more expert witnesses and investigations and more complex jury selection, and include an automatic right to appeal.
These procedures stretch the conviction process into decades-long ordeal that delays justice while prolonging the trauma experienced by victims and the community. Even after appeals, post-conviction challenges delay most executions by roughly 20 years.
And in Pennsylvania, it’s all but impossible that all this expense and effort will actually result in an execution. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1978, the Commonwealth has convicted 400 people, exonerated 10, and executed only three. The cost of these efforts? Over $1 billion.
Since 2015, governors including Josh Shapiro have refused to sign off on death warrants, halting all executions. Over 120 convicted criminals are now awaiting executions, one of the largest backlogs in the nation. Mr. Zappala’s efforts would do nothing except make Nicole Virzi the latest name added to a growing list of death-row inmates that isn’t being whittled down — except by exonerations and deaths in prison.
The details of the case of baby Leon are particularly upsetting and almost unfathomable: massive head trauma, apparently consistent only with a rag-doll-style bludgeoning, while in the care of a family friend. They make us question the goodness of the world itself.
But we don’t make the world better through vengeance. The evidence in this case doesn’t negate the proven ineffectiveness, and harm, of pursuing the death penalty. Further, no evidence has shown capital punishment is an effective deterrent to violent crime.
Baby Leon deserves justice. His family deserves justice. The court system can deliver justice, or at least a measure of it. The death penalty, however, is not justice, and pursuing it will only delay, and weaken, the measure of justice the system can provide.
First Published: August 27, 2024, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: August 27, 2024, 12:01 p.m.
