Capital Punishment Paper

(For this class I was taking, June 2005:)

The system of capital punishment, or the death penalty, has been with humanity probably since the first days of civilization. Certainly every civilization has historically had some method of condemning its citizens to death and executing that sentence, be it the Chinese tearing the condemned apart with five horses or the infamous guillotine of the French Revolution. Perhaps it is related to the similarly-ancient practice of human sacrifice, the ritual killing of people in an attempt to appease supernatural forces. While of course the death penalty is not intended to appease supernatural forces but equally abstract concepts such as “the law” or “society,” the end result is the same. As of 2004 the United States ranked as the nation with the fourth-highest number of executions, beat out only by other nations known for their civility and enlightenment: Vietnam, Iran, and China (at number one with a whopping 3400 reported executions in 2004.) There are many people that believe that this ancient establishment of capital punishment is still necessary in this day and age, but a growing minority of people disagree, believing that for various reasons the death penalty is ethically or morally wrong. I am one of this minority.

Why? Quite simply because I believe killing is wrong. If killing is wrong then it of course follows quite logically that it is wrong to kill. In logic this is called a tautology. I cannot argue why I believe killing is wrong, since this is based entirely on my own opinion. For all I know everyone else is right and killing is okay in some circumstances, though everyone’s inability to agree on what exactly those “some circumstances” would be doesn’t do much to convince me. More to the point, if there is no universal right or wrong then in the absence of an absolute external moral code I can only go by my own personal feeling that killing is wrong.

Is there a benefit in executing criminals versus keeping them alive and imprisoned? In a short-sighted sense it certainly appears so, which explains why our short-sighted ancestors always permitted capital punishment and indeed many short-sighted advocates still support it. But in actuality it frequently costs more to execute someone than to keep them alive (using “humane” methods like the electric chair – whacking someone with an axe is of course still pretty cheap) so in a purely literal manner it seems the least cost would be to allow criminals to live. Does this benefit society? I would argue that yes, it does, since a society with no death penalty has no blood on its hands, or at least less blood, and also no one has to be put in the unfortunate position of being executioner.

If we are ever going to reach a point where killing is not permissible in any shape or form we must agree not to kill or to permit killing ourselves. Especially given that innocent people do get convicted of capital crimes and some are even wrongfully executed -- if the end-goal is a society where innocent people do not have to fear wrongful death, a system where innocent people are wrongly put to death is clearly not a well-thought-out answer.

According to many traditions ranging from Buddhism to quantum physics, there is no fundamental difference between self and other, observer and observed. Labor leader Eugene Debs once memorably said "…while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." Personally I do not want to live in a society where I can be put to death by the state for any reason. Obviously I would expect any such reason to be spurious because I have no intention of committing any severe crimes but even if I did I would want to be given a chance to redeem myself. Kant (amongst others) argued that we must only endorse rules we would allow to be universal -- if I want to be forgiven I must be willing to forgive.

Worse, the death penalty seems to be aimed at the worst parts of human mentality -- bloodlust, thirst for vengeance, emotion over rationality, etc. -- and is based off of the mistaken idea that two wrongs make a right. Two wrongs do not make a right, they make two wrongs. To do evil in the name of fighting evil is still doing evil. The most famous counter-argument is usually put as such: "What if someone killed your mother, wouldn't you want to see them dead?" To which I would have to answer that yes, I probably would like to see that person dead, but the whole purpose of society is that it is supposed to be driven by higher impulses than my own irrational and emotional responses to situations. For that matter, there are many people I would personally like to see dead and even a few people out there who would love to see me dead, but none of these personal opinions can or should be used as a justification for the irreversible taking of human life.

Another common argument put forth by pro-death advocates is "They (the capital criminals) lost the right to be human by the severity of their crimes." Says who? Who could possibly make that call? Who wants that kind of responsibility, and who could take it without being corrupted by it? Executions on trumped-up charges have been a favorite way of getting rid of those who are politically inconvenient or in disfavor since the dawn of civilization. (Recall what happened to Jesus or the many wives of Henry VIII if you doubt this assertion.) To my mind this is a greater evil than any evil a system of capital punishment could or does prevent and the only way to remove it is to forbid the state the power to decide life or death.

A third argument dismisses my own hard-line “killing is wrong” stance with an off-hand "It's all fine and good to say killing is never justified, but what about in the real world?" The problem with this is that objectively speaking there is no real world. The real world is what you perceive it as and what you create it to be. As long as you keep justifying killing as a solution to problems there will always be at least one person in the world who believes killing is justified. I believe killing is not a justifiable solution to any problem, not even in the defense of my own life. I cannot stop the universe from killing me -- rather, my death is so near to being inevitable that for all intents and purposes I must consider it such – all I can control is whether I live my life with a clean conscience and without getting blood on my hands.

But my own personal favorite argument for the death penalty, perhaps because it is the one I favored when I was pro-capital punishment as a teenager, is “Rabid dogs need to be put down." This seems like a pretty succinct case until you realize that we are not discussing rabid dogs, we are discussing human beings. More to the point, the reason rabid dogs need to be put down is because there is no way to cure them. If there were a way to cure them it would certainly be unethical to choose killing them over curing them. The antisocial behavior characterized by capital crimes can be cured in humans and if it is only at a small percentage right now that is arguably due to insufficient attempts at cure over punishment.

In conclusion, here is a counter-ethical question: you are provided with solid proof that your existence is making the world an overall worse place for everyone else and that your immediate removal would make things better for everyone else. As a result the state (or similar sovereign body) plans to execute you. Do you concede and go to your death like the lamb to the slaughter? Remember, it has been proven to you that your death will benefit everyone else. Can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, right? Greatest good for the greatest number, right? Will you go along? Many people take a laid-back attitude about the idea of other people having their rights and their lives deprived of them by a corrupt and inefficient system of "justice," because as long as it's someone else, it's okay – but is this the mentality of a civilized and ethical person or is this the mentality of a child?