Despite all the death sentences carried out in other fine states, Michigan has not executed anyone since it became a state in 1837. That might change if State Rep. Dan Acciavatti (R-Chesterfield Township) has his way. In reaction to a brutal crime spree that included two murders in his district, Acciavatti hopes to amend the state constitution to allow capital punishment for first-degree murder. But doing so would be a step back for a state that was perhaps the first government in the English-speaking world to abolish a punishment that is legally, financially and, above all, morally indefensible. More responsible legislators should ignore Acciavatti's pleas and refuse to write this unjust practice into Michigan's laws.

Appealing to a frightened public, Acciavatti says Michigan needs harsher punishments, including death, to deter would-be criminals. He makes no pretense at proving the dubious proposition that the death penalty is actually an effective deterrent. More tellingly, he completely ignores the host of problems associated with capital punishment that would make it unacceptable in a civilized society regardless of any supposed efficacy as a deterrent.

Those problems range from the mundane and perhaps tractable to the profound and insolvable. In American society, the death penalty is expensive to carry out and is disproportionately imposed on minority defendants. Limiting appeals and careful use of sentencing guidelines might, in theory, address these problems, although the strict guidelines that would be needed to keep racist attitudes from influencing jury decisions aren't exactly in place.

But even the most carefully constructed system of executions remains problematic. The limitations on appeals that would be needed to make the death penalty a cost-effective endeavor would also invite the execution of innocents. If horror stories of public defenders in capital cases sleeping through court or using cocaine weren't enough, the fact that Barry Scheck's Innocence Project has used DNA testing to free 14 people who had been sentenced to death should make anyone who thinks all those on the nation's death rows deserve to die think twice. It requires a unique strand of cold-blooded utilitarianism to justify a system that inevitably will lead to the occasional state-sponsored murder of an innocent citizen.

Fundamentally, giving courts the authority to kill is an immoral act - as the old adage goes, two wrongs don't make a right. If punishment is meant to protect the public and provide for the eventual rehabilitation of those who can be reformed, the death penalty should have no role to play in the corrections system. Indeed, it is curious that more religious conservatives, who purport to believe in a religion that preaches forgiveness and tells them to love their enemies, don't share the same view. Michigan has held the correct moral stance on capital punishment since statehood, and there's no reason to change it now.