Getting Off the Hook on Capital Punishment

On Thursday, John Eichinger will not be executed by the state of Pennsylvania. He will join a growing group of men and women on death row whose executions have been stayed pending the Supreme Court decision in the case of Baze v. Rees. As these lives are, at least temporarily, spared, so also Americans will once again be spared fully confronting the moral implications of capital punishment.

If the court's decision in Baze v. Rees finds that execution by means of lethal injection -- specifically the use of a three drug "cocktail" -- constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, the fate of capital punishment will be thrown into even greater limbo than it is presently. Eventually, due to challenges to its various components, it may be eliminated entirely. But if capital punishment ends only because of these sorts of challenges and not because of a national reckoning with its full meaning, ironic as it may be, Baze v. Rees and cases like it will have let our nation off the hook in a way that cheapens our claim to being a judicious people.

As a result of repeated exonerations, 58 percent of Americans, according to a poll by the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that provides analysis on capital punishment, agree that a moratorium on executions is necessary until the possibility of wrongful convictions is addressed. There is also wide support for limiting the scope of capital punishment as evidenced by the Supreme Court abolishing the practice for juveniles and the mentally retarded and referring to "evolving standards of decency." But for most of us, reaching the first conclusion is obvious and the choosing the second position is relatively easy.

But what if inequity or prosecutorial misconduct of any sort could be eliminated, all the accused had sufficient counsel, there was no possibility of wrongful convictions, no juveniles, or mentally retarded or disabled executed, none with extenuating circumstances? Clearly, this is not possible -- but what if it were? For or against, is it right to put a man or woman to death for their crimes? For those who consider it mandatory to have a position on the Iraq war, human rights, the guarantees of the constitution or Roe v. Wade in order to claim to be an engaged citizen, answering "yes" or "no" to his question is mandatory as well.

In fact, that question says as much or more than the other issues about who we are as a people. Particularly, those of us who live with most of our basic needs met. For us, in order to sleep easy while executing another, no matter how brutal or heinous their crime, we must have the talent to distance yourself from that person. Up close, difficult -- guards on death row, particularly those involved with the mechanics of the actual execution process, report depression, even PTSD as a result. But safe in our own homes, it is quite possible.

With that talent in hand, we can distance ourselves from others of many descriptions. Executions are not televised; the caskets of soldiers aren't on the news. Similarly, if we can allow for death by commission, we can allow for it by omission. A man dies by lethal injection at San Quentin; an elderly woman dies in an SRO for lack of medical attention. And that, in turn, entails a talent for ranking, each person becoming a point of reference for our own lives. We end up terrified of being an unfortunate and envious of the more fortunate. The driver of the Honda hands a dollar to the man at the top of the off-ramp and redoubles his efforts to own a Lexus. As much as we don't want to see the families still living in squalor in the wake of Katrina, we want to watch the Oscars. To read, even to write, that somehow executing a killer has any relation to a desire to watch a movie star walk down a red carpet can seem absurd, but our society is caught up in the artificial, and the death penalty is impossible without that.

In addition, boiling down the passion for justice that we do have to a necessity for executing one person demonstrates in a microcosm how our politics addresses symptoms rather than causes, thinks short-term rather than in the long-run and when we get rained on, look down instead of up. One of the unlimited supply of examples: California has been going back and forth on spending as much as $356 million on a new death row facility while the budget for drug rehabilitation programs under its Prop. 36 will be reduced to approximately $100 million in 2008-09.

Finally, what does it say about us when we express our passion for justice by way of retribution rather than compassion?

The question of whether to execute should be asked of our presidential candidates, it should be asked of each other. Four thousand men and women have been put to death in our name since 1930 and over one thousand since the reinstatement of the modern death penalty in 1976. No matter the brutality and heinousness of their crimes, no matter if they showed no remorse, we owe it to them to say if, standing in front of the judge of our own best nature, we owe them our own show of remorse.

Comments

[JacobSinger]

I think a nation's capital punishment laws [or the prohibition of capital punishment] is the prime indicator of a nation's progressive development.

Many in this country defend pre self-awareness human life [anti-early abortion], yet feel that aggressive war and executions are quite acceptable; to me this clearly indicates a type of mass-psychosis, where an idolized notion of preserving potential life--to gain acceptance and approval by a "higher power"--is more important than preserving fully developed human life. If you think on that with a level of intelligence above the nominal, it is clear that such a position is taken solely for reasons of self-interest rather than any humanitarian concept.

But such is to be expected from those who promote a society [as we have here in the US] where the socio-economic mantra is along the lines of "survival of the fittest / winner takes all." The two notions run parallel, but the former is a symptom of the latter.

When we become progressive enough in our politics and policies that we demand a comprehensive social infrastructure that provides healthcare for all, quality education for all, and adequate retirement benefits for all Americans, then we will have also advanced to the point where we will no longer be able to stomach the state-sanctioned atrocity of capital punishment.

The lacking element in all of this madness is empathy, and it will not increase to any greater magnitude until we address the source of the problem, which is being trapped within a socio-economic system that discounts basic humanitarian systems and promotes social Darwinism.

[zjr909]

I think you're giving the American people too free of a pass in suggesting they need to be distracted from the violence committed in their name. They're a lot more bloodthirsty than that. I think if the TV networks stopped broadcasting tid-bits of celebrities' lives and starting broadcasting live executions, the ratings would skyrocket. And if the ratings ever fell, it wouldn't be pangs of conscience but simply because executions would have become old hat. The focus is all wrong anyway. It shouldn't be on the person about to be executed but on the society about to give up another piece of enlightenment. An execution here; a waterboarding there; and a great big wiretap everywhere else: not a very moral base to build your society on. Americans want nothing else nearly so much as they want vengeance - vengeance for anything anywhere anytime. It's the only way they know to deal with problems: search out the problem and destroy it. Period.

[SEQUOIABISON]

Theoretically we teach our children by example.

When we say it is wrong to kill a human being we do not put qualifiers along side that statement.

When a child hears about a state sanctioned execution they naturally inquire; “I thought you said it was wrong to kill a human being”?

The violent vicious hypocrisy of our nations citizens is mind-boggling.

When are we going to join the rest of the civilized world and outlaw this barbaric blood thirsty practice of revenge and teach our children once and for all that killing a fellow human is wrong unless in self defense.

[Halsey]

I've never understood the death penalty. State sanctioned murder...in many cases..years and years after the fact. I will say.."if" I saw someone murder a family member..and "if" I had the means..I would feel no guilty in killing that person...precisely at THAT moment..but NOT years later..it would be an act of immediate passion..not a systematic, strange trek down some so-called "justice".

I oft wonder...who would Tim McVeigh be today if he hadn't been put to death...he may have redeemed himself..we'll never know...as he as so anxious just to get it over with...

I would think that life in prison would be a thousand times worse than just "getting it over with"...ergo..a greater punishment...

[LeonBNJ]

One moral factor that to me takes down the death penalty is that can anyone be really sane when they rationalize the pre-meditated taking the life of another? We have well established the 'insanity defense' for murder and crimes of violence and indeed many murders end up with life penalties or even far less when questions of the sanity of the accused are brought up.
Perhaps that should be the key point of ending the use of the death penalty - not the pain of the mechanisms of applying it.

[Ben Dixon]

How ironic that so many liberals whine about how unjust the death penalty is yet they support abortion. Lets have a real discussion in this country and be consistent, either life is cheap and both the death penalty and abortion is ok, or life is special and neither should be allowed.

[mgloraine]

How ironic that so many rednecks whine about how unjust abortion is yet they support the unprovoked murder of a million Iraqis and thousands of American, British, Canadian, etc. troops so that the Bush Crime Family can enrich itself with war profiteering and stolen Iraqi oil. It's OK with you compassionate Christianists to kidnap people off the street and whisk them away to secret prisons with secret torture chambers for Cheney, Mukasey, and Rove to amuse themselves, but unthinkable for a woman to have any authority over or ownership of her own body and its processes.
I suspect that the anti-choicer's true concern for human embryos lies in the dispute over ownership of the embryo and the fact that there's no Republicans making huge profits from the embryo industry as yet. Once they figure out how to claim exclusive ownership of all embryos and genetic material, they'll want to make abortion mandatory and pregnancy a billable condition.

[maddogbitesback]

Thank you for highlighting one of the great weaknesses of America. People "deserve" what they get. If you are Kenny Lay then you deserve a jail sentence for destroying the lives of tens of thousands of people. But a frightened poorman will get the same sentence for stealing a few thousand from a bank. People are ranked and the higher your rank the more assured it is that you will never be even tried and if tried you won't be found guilty.

Thanks again for putting the question of capital punishment in clear and stark terms.

[appleknocker]

It's been a long time since we could make a serious "claim to being a judicious people."