One Thought On Capital Punishment
In the wake of the execution of Tookie Williams the news is awash with editorials and opinions on the death penalty. While reasonable people can differ regarding the morality of this kind of punishment, one argument that always seems to surface seems to me untenable: that the state execution of a criminal is tantamount to murder itself—that the state lowers itself to the criminal’s level by committing the same act and is, thereby, guilty and debased. To see the flaw in this logic, consider this scenario: I walk into a convenience store and, while the store employee is turned away, pocket $100 from the till. I am subsequently caught, tried, and found guilty. In addition to returning the $100, I am fined $100. Does this make the state a thief? They’ve taken money from me against my will, after all. If I’m imprisoned, is the state guilty of kidnapping or involuntary confinement? In fact, our entire legal system is based on the assumption that the state is mandated to perform certain actions for the good of the populace and for the administration of justice that, were they to be performed by the individual, would be felonious. There are legitimate arguments against capital punishment; this is not one of them.
posted by unca | 11:51 AM
6 Comments:
YES! Thank you for articulating this so well. This state-is-a-murderer argument has driven me crazy with frustration because it's
a) so common, and
b) so flawed.
So thanks again.
Good analogy Unca.
The thing I can’t understand is when ever there is a well publicized case like this many people will get behind a condemned man and will believe what ever he has to say. You will here people say “well he said he didn’t do it”.
So I’m supposed to believe a guy that has been convicted of four brutal murders?
Forget about the court transcripts. (Which I’m sure most of the these supporters haven’t read) and over 20 years of failed appeals. Now I hear the supporters of Tookie Williams want to a Statesman’s funeral. Please help me understand this phenomenon that happens to some people. Maybe they fall under the “This is a Conspiracy” category.
Link below
http://nonagendazone.blogspot.com/2005/05/comments
since you don't let non-bloggers post on your blog :) and since you may not refer back to my post regarding this topic, I thought I'd steer you that way again to see a response from "cal" in response to your link regarding capital punishment.
thanks. that will be all at this time.
(except to say that I enjoyed this viewpoint and gives me something to chew on).
interesting. while i don't subscribe to the "state is a murderer" point of view, I don't believe it's wholly unsupportable. There's a fairly distinct line between capital punishment and the examples you provided, in that the death penalty is an infliction of physical injury on (actually, the destruction of) a person; incarceration and monetary fines are not. And while many of the limits to individual behavior do not apply to the state, others do; some actions (goes the argument) are so inherently wrong that they are morally proscribed to both individual and state.
We tend to recoil at any other (ie, not the death penalty) form of literal, physical lex talionis (ie, "the law of retaliation"). Most of us would consider a system that officially and literally enforces "an eye for an eye" barbaric and unacceptable. We don't cane people (here); we wouldn't accept a law that provided for rapists to be raped as retribution, nor arsonists to be burned and disfigured according to the disfigurement of their victims. The idea of such state-sanctioned, state-inflicted injury seems beneath us, something that would diminish us as a society. One could make a reasonable case that such laws would be more about hatred, revenge and schadenfreude than about justice, deterrence, or safety. The application of this same line of reasoning to the death penalty-- that most extreme form of literal lex talionis-- doesn't seem specious to me.
Thanks for this. I have to confess it's made me rethink my argument a bit. I agree that a case could be made that capital punishment is "cruel and unusual" and in the same category as the physical punishments which you describe - punishments we long ago dismissed as barbaric. However, it may also be useful to note that over the years the state has attempted (not very successfully) to provide more "humane" methods of execution--the idea being that retribution is exacted by taking away the criminal's very existence rather than by making him suffer per se. Thus the execution does NOT constitute (or, at least is not intended to constitute) an "extreme form of physical punishment." The state is saying, in essence, "What you have done is so reprehensible that our only fit response is to end your life." The fact that individual members of our society choose to view this event through lenses of hatred and revenge is unfortunate but not the responsibility of the state.
Now, for the record, my thinking at this point is that the death penalty should be suspended for the very reasons that you and Bryan have noted in your other posts.
hm, yes. a couple of thots...
i agree a migration toward more humane methods of execution indicates the goal of capital punishment legislation is not suffering, but simply the ending of a life where deemed appropriate. and i concede that somewhat weakens my analogy to the other barbaric forms of punishment i mentioned.
i think an argument could be made that the intentional extinguishing of a life is as much about the result as the means (not that means is either irrelevant or unimportant)... and although an execution may not involve intentional infliction of pain, that doesn't necessarily mean it's not an extreme form of physical punishment. in any case, it remains the single remaining "ad corpus" punishment we permit ("ad corpus" being a fake latin term I just made up, because including latin phrases in one's argument is always a good idea, and even tho this one isn't real, it should be), and as such is subject to different standards and interpretations than other punishments. so the assertion that even a "humane" execution is immoral-- regardless of the perpetrating entity-- is probably defensible.
Also, with regard to "The fact that individual members of our society choose to view this event through lenses of hatred and revenge is unfortunate but not the responsibility of the state."... I'm not sure I agree that the state gets a pass here. In the context of analyzing and evaluating the laws by which we live, I submit that a PRIMARY consideration is the "lenses" through which individual members of society view them-- given that individuals collectively authorize the state to act on their behalf (at least, theoretically). In this case, i suspect it's a question of how pervasive or representative a viewpoint is... and while we admittedly can't account for the lunatic fringe, we're probably "responsible" for more than just the majority viewpoint.
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