Death Penalty (2)

Some of the objections to capital punishment were dealt with in the first post, and I will do my best to avoid being redundant. I will present here just a few of the many objections and some brief explanation.

Effect on society

Many, though certainly not all, feel that permitting premeditated murder is totally unacceptable, even if done under the laws and process of state institutions. Capital punishment, they claim, lowers the value of human life as seen by the general population and brutalizes society. It is based on a need for revenge. It violates our belief in the human capacity for change, and powerfully reinforces the idea that killing can be a proper way of responding to those who have wronged society.

(I think this is perhaps the strongest reason not to have a death penalty. As we become desensitized to one sort of violence, we may, as human nature and history attest, fall into permitting or endorsing a wider scope of acceptable violent behavior. Humanity needs to put these impulses in check. Once humanity becomes accustomed to a certain behavior, it becomes easier with repetition and experience to continue in that pattern and expand beyond it.

When does it become proper or purposeful, outside of immediate response in self-defense, to continue the cycle of killing? How do we tell a man not to murder and then, with a straight face, murder another? This sort of reminds me of hypocritical parents who tell their children that violence is naughty and solves nothing yet, when themselves faced with handling the child’s misbehavior, seek to correct it through the very sort of violence they, just yesterday, eschewed. Welcome to the wonderful world of ‘mixed messages’.

The issue comes down to what we consider ‘violence’ to be. Some will undoubtedly point out that there is a difference between spanking a child to correct their behavior and meting out punishment to a convicted criminal. In the same manner, some would define the sport of boxing as ‘violent’, rather than being another form of controlled aggression, regulated by rules and participation is not imposed upon the participants by the physical force of another. Imposition of a capital sentence might be misconstrued as a form of ‘controlled aggression’, but it’s clearly not. At least one of the participants in an execution doesn’t choose to be there, and it is this issue of ‘forcing it upon another’ which is the deciding factor in what defines violence as violence.

To look at the problem in terms of its immediate effects is short-sighted and dangerous. I may stop the child each time I spank him or her from their current pattern of behavior and even, all things going as planned, encourage the child to never act that way again. Yet, the child doesn’t process things the same way that adults do (or should do anyhow.) Eventually a child learns that violence is a justifiable means to get what he or she desires. The abused become abusers themselves and in the same pattern, seeking the vulnerable and undefended as objects of their violent tendencies. The only thing limiting this effect is the chance that a force greater than their own would intervene, similar to the parent who fears the scorn of neighbors or the scrutiny of police agencies. This ingrained tendency toward the use of ‘justified’ violence remains latent when not mitigated by stronger factors.

Even the worst of murderers create ‘justifications’ or have rationale for their killings. Making up a rationale in your mind doesn’t change the act or the effects of it. We falsely believe that our justification for killing, or the pomp and circumstance around it, somehow causes the act of killing to magically transform into something innocuous or even beneficial to the society that performs it. It reminds me of the ancient Aztecs, who ritually sacrificed their captives to gain favor with the gods.

By using the death penalty, we make a statement as to our national attitude, that we will answer killing with more killing; that the goals of peace, compassion, and non-violence are only what we ask for ourselves, but not for those who have earned our scorn. It is easy to live by principle when everything is going good and everyone is in agreement. It is only when those principles meet the test of our innate barbarism that our national pathos become truly tested.)

Lack of Deterrence

The death penalty has not been shown to be effective in the reduction of the homicide rate. There are some indications that executions actually increase the murder rate.

(The deterrent issue has been discussed in previous posts so I won’t linger on it here. There are a couple of salient points to add, however, that reflect back on ‘justification’ and how it shapes the behavior of the killer.

Deterrence only works on those who aren’t going to commit the crime anyhow or on those who are not in a position where murder becomes a viable option. You could even say that having a death penalty as a deterrent is overall useless because most of our society that doesn’t engage in murder wouldn’t be murdering anyway because their deterrent is morally based and socialized. It never occurs to me to murder people for any reason. I wasn’t raised that way.

The murderer always justifies his killing. We seldom agree with his version of events, but he still insists that he had no choice but to murder, either out of inflamed passions or from practical considerations (i.e. leaving no witnesses or avoiding capture.) To hear the murderer tell it, one would think that each and every murder is an act of self-defense! The murderer has fooled himself into believing that his killing is justified. We, in accepting the death penalty as a solution, punishment, or deterrent, make the same horrific miscalculation. We also proclaim loudly and boldly our desire to ‘protect society’, but these claims of self-defense are equally bogus and without real purpose.)

Unfairness

The mentally ill, poor, males, and racial minorities are over-represented among those executed.

(There is no doubt that members of these groups are disproportionately represented among that ranks of death row inmates, and for good reason. It’s not just a problem with our legal system. There are also factors of poverty, mental illness, or of being a male raised in a violent society that act as powerful influences on behavior. That Blacks and Hispanics seem to be sentenced to death more than others might just be because they murder more than others due to the circumstances they are raised within. It is not, however, a case of minorities being inherently prone to violence, but a few becoming prone to violence due to social pressures. It’s kill or be killed sometimes. We treat it as murder because it is, but because we also don’t live within the world that created that scenario, we are at a disadvantage when it comes to passing a definitive judgment.

This doesn’t mean to imply that we should excuse the crime. Far from it! Once a man has proved himself capable of murder, the best possible action we could take is to separate him from society lest those same circumstances arise again and he chooses to act out in the same violent manner. If we send that same man back into same situation and expect him not to kill again, we are fooling ourselves.

Fairness is a matter that can be addressed by court reform.)

Uselessness

Killing a murderer does not bring his victim back to life. It achieves nothing but the death of still another person.

(This requires no explanation, I’m hoping. Some victims and their families speak about finding 'closure' upon the death of a killer. Is revenge the only way, or the healthiest way, to overcome a tragedy? If your psyche cannot be soothed by any other means than murder, then what does that say about you? And what now differentiates between you and the killer?)

Prosecutorial & Police Misconduct

(If you don’t think that prosecutors and police don’t lie, you are living in a dream world and likely don’t know what your own spouse or children are doing when you are away from home.

Our system of justice is adversarial. We offer a prosecution and a defense, and nowhere along the line is truth really ever considered. Prosecutors have careers to advance and getting convictions is the goal. The search for ‘justice’ preempts the quest for truth. This is why many prosecutors still insist upon relying upon shady eyewitness testimony, even when such testimony has been proven in many studies to be ‘iffy’ at best. The reluctance of prosecutors to use DNA testing or provide the defense with exculpatory factors is proof enough of their real intent. If you Google ‘Prosecutorial Misconduct’, you will see what I’m talking about here.

Truth is a scientific matter. The technology is available to us. The cost of real justice should not deter us from seeking it. Justice is served when finding the guilty party, not by creating a most probable scapegoat to assuage our seemingly unstoppable urge for revenge. Truth and evidence should be the determining factor in guilt or innocence. DNA testing must be done immediately on available suspects. Forensics has come a long way since Sherlock Holmes. We should be able to do away with prosecutorial histrionics in our courtrooms and seek reasonable, if not absolute, evidentiary truths.

Our legislators are reluctant to put laws on the books that would punish malfeasant or corrupt prosecutors. I can recall no cases where over zealous district attorneys were charged with crimes or jailed as a result of misconduct.)

In the end, there are too many ‘ifs’, too many uncontrolled variables and interests in capital cases. Death is final. There is no fixing that mistake should a mistake arise. I also fear the government’s capacity to expand its definition of ‘capital’ crime to include political dissent or tax evasion, by creating vague cause and effect scenarios of national security to justify state execution for minor infractions or constitutionally protected actions that fall out of political favor.

Kol Tuv