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Dialogue:
An Important Part of Death Penalty Education
by
Kevin Acers
Many
people are wrestling with various aspects of the death penalty, including
those who lean towards support of the death penalty but are interested in
hearing other points of view in order to stimulate their continuing exploration of
the issue. Below is an exchange of this sort. It began with an inquiry posted
on an internet bulletin board, addressed to "you anti-death penalty
people." My response follows.
AN INQUIRY. . .
This is not a smart-aleck question, I'm really trying to understand. If
murder is the same as execution, wouldn't kidnapping be the same as imprisonment?
Wouldn't rape be the same as sex? Who are we to decide who is punished
for what crime? If you're not going to play God, as I have seen it put,
then why pick and choose when you do? If you convict someone of
a lower crime that doesn't carry a death penalty, say just jail time, aren't
you in the same sense passing judgement and punishing? I know that the
death penalty is a lot different from jail time, but so is murder compared
to rape and kidnapping. I was just wondering how you decipher which
is ok to punish and which is not.
. . .AND A RESPONSE:
It is not a question of "which is ok to punish
and which is not." Criminal justice has two main functions: public safety
and personal accountability for wrongdoing. (Under a restorative model, there
is a third key function: healing. That doesn't play a significant role in
our current system, unfortunately).
So, the big question might be: what is the death penalty's
role in public safety and personal accountability?
There's an argument to be made that by executing a
dangerous person, public safety is greater. With modern prisons, however,
the risk for escape is so slight that it doesn't justify the extremism of
killing prisoners to prevent the rare escape from a super-max facility. I
know that I never feel a greater sense of security the day after a prisoner
has been executed. From a public safety angle, then, there are alternatives
to executions which do not compromise moral standards like an execution does.
Re: personal accountability, an execution is definitely
effective--as long as there is complete guarantee that there will be no mistakes.
As long as humans are involved in the whole process--from the arresting officers
to the evidence lab personnel to the attorneys on both sides and judges in
every court, including appeals and Supreme--there can be no such guarantee.
A lengthy prison term such as life with POSSIBLE (not inevitable) parole or
life with no parole is in some ways a stricter way to hold a person accountable
for wrongdoings in that their deprivation of liberty is prolonged far beyond
the number of years they would be awaiting execution. But again, there
is something "bigger" than whether or not it is an effective punihsment--that
is what it makes of the punisher. If we as a soceity deprive a person of his/her
liberty to hold them accountable for a horrible deed, and we do not torture,
degrade, or kill him/her, then society has taken to high ground even when
the prisoner arguable 'deserves' worse. We, as a society deserve better than
to do the maximum harm when we have viable alternatives. (And, of course,
if a person turns out to be wrongly impirsoned after many years--which is
hapening at a more frequent rate these days--nothing can replace the years
they've lost, but at least their liberty can be restored. Post execution,
there is nothing to restore except setting the record straight, which is of
little solace to a corpse or its loved ones left behind. Anyone who says the
occassional execution of an innocent person is a tragic but acceptable risk
should volunteer to have the person they love the most in their life sent
to death row.)
I agree that there is a diference between raping or
kidnapping and murder. The implication is that there must be a striving to
balance the severity of the punishment with the abhorence of the crime. That
makes sense, but only if you take it so far. (You can't execute a serial killer
sixteen times more than someone who killed one victim, for example.) At some
point, you have to draw a line and set a maximum punishment. People cannot
be treated more brutally than whatever that maximum punishment is, even if
some people who earn that punishment committed crimes more brutal than others.
There is no way for any punishment to be symmetrical with a murder from the
victim's perspective, even the death penalty. Achieving that symmetry is a
futile goal. We must let go of that, even though there is an appealling logic
to it in a way, and follow standards of punishment which punish the perpetrator
without causing further damage to society. My view is that an execution does
damage society. It puts blood on our hands where there was none before.
I have no problem with passing judgement and
issuing punishment, especially when it is a matter of public safety,
and as long as there are standards of fairness which are scrupulously adhered
to. To me, this is not playing God, it is playing human. We need to be the
best humans we can be. I do not believe we can do that while executing prisoners.
We do not need to be inspired by the methods of those who fail. Most people would
agree--regardless of their stance on dp--that torturing prisoners (even if
they deserve it) is crossing the line. We just don't do that--because we do
have certain standards of moral integrity. I place killing prisoners with
torture on that far side of the line. The death penalty--like torture, and
like violent crime--falls far below the standards of moral integrity that
we must promote.