Capital punishment is death by a state-sanctioned execution of an individual. It is imposed by state or federal court for specific crimes as state in legal codes.
Capital punishment cases have been prominent in the media recently, which makes a discussion of the issue timely. My fundamental basis for being opposed to all capital punishment, however, is moral. It is not about specific cases. It is certainly not the claim that individuals facing punishment currently or in the future do not deserve appropriate punishment. The moral argument is not about them; it is about us. We the People make the laws.
A moral reason for opposition to the death penalty is that it demeans us. One need not emphasize the most recent example of a botched execution as a contemporary example of torture, clearly without legal justification. Death by firing squad steamed in media would be a remainder of gruesome punishments of men torn apart by animals in the Roman Circus and degraded spectators. Gruesome scenes attract spectators, like carrion birds.
The ancient law of Lex Taliones was a law of retaliation summarized as ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ It permitted an individual to retaliate in equal measure for a wrong done, even up to a relative killing the offending person. We have matured beyond retaliation and the law of the jungle with a legal system not based on personal revenge. The state or the federal government is the plaintive in capital cases as established by law, not the family or colleagues. The law allows for mitigating circumstances when presented to the court. Families and colleagues have no standing and could be excluded from making appeals at the sentencing phase. Forgiveness from a family member is good for that person but irrelevant. The court establishes who will be witnesses at the execution.
If one is not persuaded by these moral arguments to oppose the death penalty, other pragmatic reasons exist.
An old saying is that justice delayed is justice denied. The length of time between act, trial, and execution in capital cases has been extended beyond reason, in some cases by more than a quarter of a century. Both the condemned and the lawyers have reasons to delay an execution. Lawyers’ ethics as agents of the court cause them to represent the best interest of the condemned. Moreover, the additional income engendered by fees for continual appeals in attractive.
The result is twofold. Execution of the death penalty is very expensive because of any delays and the expense of the execution itself. Also, the condemned person who dies is not the same person who committed the crime. Execution does not take account of the possibility of true repentance and reformation. The reference here is not to faked conversion and reformation intended to affect clemency or pardon. Reformation is possible even though our prisons seem inefficient in encouraging such change.
I hope you are convinced by the moral arguments to abolish the death penalty. If not, I hope you will take seriously the pragmatic arguments. We can abolish the death penalty and produce a more humane society.
Raymond Brady Williams, Crawfordsville, LaFollette Distinguished Professor in the Humanities emeritus, contributed this guest column.
