Newest Death Penalty Case Should be a Death Penalty Challenge
Looks like the U.S. Supreme Court is taking up a new death penalty case. Unlike other cases of a similar nature, the Supreme Court is charge not with determining whether a death sentence is warranted. The guilt of the defendant is absolutely unquestioned. Instead, the justices must decide on constitutionally acceptable standards for when a state elects to carry out an execution by means of lethal injection.
The facts of Baze v. Rees case are not actually important to the law the Supreme Court is examining and yet the horror of the crime (Ralph Baze used an SKS assault rifle to ambush a sheriff and his deputy, shooting the former three times in the back and the latter twice in the back and then once in the head) and our emotional response to it is probably why we have a death penalty at all. Given that most European nations have banned the death penalty, it’s as if the U.S. is alone in its emotional need for retribution for the heinous acts of some of its citizens. And yet, by continuing to question the legality of the death penalty, it shows we still face some guilt over our need for executions.
Our nation must decide if we are for the death penalty or against it. This case show the ambivalence that exists. We don’t want to hurt anyone anymore than we have to, so we moved from hangings, to the electric chair and then to lethal injection. Now we’re trying to make sure that it is painless. A painless death is not what any of these criminals gave their victims, so what are we trying to say? If a painful death is extreme punishment, then we must be against the death penalty.
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In the past, I’ve been ambivalent regarding the death penalty. It comes down to the purpose of our criminal justice system. Is the purpose of the system to protect society or are we looking for revenge? As humanists, I believe we can all agree that revenge is never a good societal practice. Rehabilitation is the far better solution. In cases where rehabilitation is unlikely, locking them away for life is the humane solution.
So, does the death penalty protect society any more than life without the possibility of parole? No. Does it hurt to use the death penalty? Possibly. In recent years there has been case after case of convicted criminals being released because new evidence exonerated them. Texas, a state with more executions than all the rest also leads in these exonerations. There is the distinct possibility that they executed completely innocent people who died before DNA was regularly tested.
With revenge being evil in itself AND the possibility for a false conviction, I could not stand behind the death penalty.
I think that is a great part of the issue with the death penalty. We don’t want to use it as revenge and it really has no other purpose. It doesn’t serve to rehabilitate because you can’t rehabilitate someone you’re going to kill. So the only purpose it serves is retribution. Given the other points you make their is no good use to to the death penalty.
Lisa lacks logic in her emotional conclusion. Plz see p. 157 of Imagine No Superstition.
As Near as I can tell we don’t want the death penalty for revenge or we wouldn’t care how much pain we inflicted. Given Chris arguments about DNA death sentences don’t seem logical. Also given that we can lock criminals up an isolate extreme cases we don’t need to kill extreme cases. And we don’t have good evidence that the death penalty deters killings. So I don’t know that I’m being that illogical but I’ll always cop to emotional.
But there are many people in the U.S. (and especially my Lone Star State) who LOVE revenge. That’s not going away. It is of course the job of the Supreme Court to offset the leanings of the mob when they contradict the spirit of the Constitution. However, when the justices are appointed by revenge-lovers like our current preznit, getting true objectivity is difficult.
I personally am terrified of the possibility that Justice Stevens could kick it before King George’s term is over. Dems in the House could moderate his choice, perhaps, but Senate Republicans could push rightward and get us a real stinker. Hang on, John! You can make it to 90!
The term “death penalty” confuses the issue. I am skeptical about the value of punishment of any kind, and “penalty” implies punishment. “Execution” is free from that moral baggage.
There is moral judgment implicit in the use of punshment. The punisher is supposed to be “right” and is giving the message “you are wrong” to the punishee.
A sounder approach is to keep moral judgments out of the picture and just deal with things calmly and coldly in the light of cause and effect.
Then you can consider - yes, there may be circumstances in which your love for the inherent humanity of a violent person is unchanged yet it is impossible for you to allow him to remain among you any longer.
In ancent Greek societies, the solution was often exile. Thus, Anaxagoras, who dared to question the fundies’ assumption that the Sun was God who traveled around the Earth, was driven out of Athens. The British once dealt with agitators for Irish independence by calling them criminals and exiling them to Australia.
Today that is no longer a practical solution to the problem of the destructive person whose presence threatens others.
Imagine you are standing on the street with a loaded shotgun in your hand. A rabid dog foaming at the mouth runs toward the schoolyard where children are playing. Your correct moral decision may then be to shoot that dog. It may be your own dog and you may love it but even so there are circumstances in which you cannot permit it to continue to live among us.
Can you substitute life imprisonment for execution? Perhaps, but one Humanist, Robert Heinlein, suggests that to deprive a person of his liberty is to deny his humanity and is therefore worse than looking him in the eye and saying sorrowfully - you must go.
Why not offer the covicted felon a choice? Dignified quick painless execution, or a life in prison.
Part of the problem with offering the convict the choice is in making the assumption that the goal is punishment. If we believe that any person can be redeamed, we should make the effort at redemption. Redemption doesn’t mean we will allow the person back into society. But it does mean we might allow them some automomy within the penal system and encourage them to study and to write, engage in art and other creative outlets.
It really depends on how you define liberty. If you consider it freedom from arbitrary authority, someone rightfully in prison has not had their liberty taken from them. A person may change their view as time goes on as well. The prospect of facing life in prison may make one consider death, when if given time another choice may be preferred or vice versa so when do you let the convict chose to die?
If you believe that serving prison time for a crime you committed is having your liberty taken from you then you may believe you should be allowed, to die, but what if the victims family doesn’t want the person to die? Who has the greater rights? I don’t think it’s as easy as you seem to be indicating.
I don’t think it is easy at all. This is an unpleasant and problematical question that unfortunately is very real and inescapable. There is no simple answer that can see.
One statistic that sticks in my mind - and I dont’ know how to process it - is that in Switzerland, “life in prison” means twenty years, max.
While Lisa’s advocacy of redemption is admirable, and shows a ompassionate person’s good will, an inescapable dilemma confronts us and requires action. The brutal reality is that there are sometimes persons amongst us whose continued presence in society is intolerable. They must be removed for the good of us all.
Redemption of a dangerous person is always to be desired but we have to deal with the possibility of a real and present danger to us all if a wrongdoer remains at large in our society. And the success rate of rehabilitation is never 100 per cent, nor are all treatments morally acceptable. (Would you approve an involuntary lobotomy? Forcible castration?)
Imagine a lifeboat with a few survivors in it, clinging to hope of survival. You may recall an Alfred Hitchcock motion picture dealing with this theme. As the days go by, one person in the lifeboat goes crazy and violent. He starts destroying the remaining resources of food and water. He tries to rape the women. Nobody can sleep because at any moment he is likely to do something that will sink the boat, such as opening the cocks in the bilge.
For their survival, the rest of the passengers in the boat must throw him overboard. If they do not, they are in peril of all dying because of his actions. As the food and drinking water gets scarcer, he is getting crazier. He must go.
So it may be their correct moral decision to kill him, or at least to refrain from holding him back when he climbs overboard. Do you have a better idea? Would you say - Oh, let him stay, we will try to straighten him out - while knowing that success is unlikely under the circumstances?
Hate to tell you, Lisa, but we are on a lifeboat. It’s Planet Earth. As I recall, I think Garrett Hardin originated the “lifeboat analogy.” He is the author of “The Tragedy of the Commons” and was a supporter if the Humanist Fellowship of San Diego.
This is a situation in which we need to set aside our immediate kindly feelings and the tendency to be indulgent. We must coldly and calmly decide to do what is likely to minimize avoidable human suffering. To avoid immediate limited human suffering is not always the best option if greater suffering is a likely outcome.
Francis,
Your point doesn’t do a thing to support the death penalty. Life in prison removes the person from society, rehabilitation or no. The lifeboat analogy doesn’t work. What we have is a giant aircraft carrier with a brig that can be used to isolate destructive crew members. Death as a punishment in this context can only be revenge, which is emotion, not logic.
Francis, thank you very, very much for bringing some logical thought into this wandering emotional discussion. If you go to my discussion of “fatal consequences” vs. “death penalty” in Imagine No Superstition, you will see how close we are in our thinking.
Denying humanity is something that people are very good at. We tag people as monsters all the time so we don’t have to give them the same consideration as ourselves and loved ones. To many, humanity is a condition you can deprive yourself of through conduct. Some are denied humanity simply because of where and to whom they were born.
Chris Hedges, in War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, delves into this habit humans have of separating the real people from the Other, the monsters who are not like us, not in any way, never. It enables us to carpet-bomb foreign cities, deprive minority populations of basic services, send 17-year-old crack addicts to high-security prisons, and all manner of things no one would do to someone they loved, that they considered human.
I don’t know how to fix it. As early as the playground, pecking orders are established and in-groups determine out-groups and already someone’s a monster. Maybe it’s learned by society’s example, maybe it’s inborn, I have no idea. It terrifies me, though, and I’m not as big a fan of humanity as I used to be.