{"id":2703,"date":"2005-03-10T19:23:17","date_gmt":"2005-03-11T00:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/03\/10\/2703.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:48:08","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:48:08","slug":"the-death-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/03\/10\/the-death-business\/","title":{"rendered":"The death business"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Your Humble Blogger happened to see a very interesting column<\/a> over at Mousewords<\/a> by the very interesting blogger Amanda Marcotte, who has also been one of the triumvirate that filled in for Jesse Taylor over at Pandagon<\/a>. Anyway, Ms. Marcotte writes about the death penalty, and writes about it very well:\n

Let's make it clear—most opponents of the death penalty aren't overly worried about the fate of the guilty. We worry about the innocent. We worry that participating in an inherently unjust system will turn the innocent into the guilty. That's why we oppose torture. We have no love for those who plan to commit terrorist attacks against us. But we know that torturing and murdering turns the innocent, in this case the young people who are our soldiers, into the guilty, people who let blood for what ultimate purpose is lost to the fog.<\/blockquote>\nThis comes pretty darn close to my own opinion about capital punishment, which I don’t think I’ve ever posted here. And, since my opinion more or less solidified during a time when somebody I love lost a close family member to murder, it seems like a good idea for me to open up that opinion again at this time and take another look.\n

There are, on the whole, four reasons for<\/I> capital punishment that I think need to be addressed. The first is deterrence, that a person making the decision to commit a murder will take into account the possibility (the probability, even) of being caught, convicted, sentenced to death, and then killed. This is usually addressed empirically: it’s one of those things you would think would be true, but in fact does not appear to work. It’s proving a counterfactual, of course, but in general the statistics I’ve seen have not shown any persuasive evidence that the existence of even a commonly used death penalty does reduce incidence of murder. It’s also pretty easy to make up a theoretical underpinning to that evidence that is just as plausible as the other: most people who make a decision to murder do not rationally judge cause and effect. It’s hard to imagine a deterrent that would<\/I> work at the moment of decision, when the long-term pressures, delusions, moral inadequacies, whatever, have already been set in place. I’m not saying that framework is necessarily true, mind you, just that it’s as plausible as the first, and that it seems to better account for the history.\n

The second reason is also deterrence of a kind, that individuals who are convicted of murder and later released are likely to murder again. I have never looked at the actual evidence of this, but of course if we so desire, we can simply never release convicted murderers. True, there is always a chance that some Governor will commute the sentence and let the person go, but that chance is quite small, and very few recidivists make it through that process. The fact that we don’t choose to impose such sentences, but do choose to impose death, seems very strange to me. Yes, true lifers must present a greater problem for jailers, but that seems, as a practical problem, to be one we can treat. That is like the economic argument that it’s wasteful and expensive to keep prisoners alive for forty or sixty years. I’ll just dismiss that one out of hand, saying as I often do that America is rich enough to do whatever we choose. Economics can’t possibly carry this argument.\n

The third reason is Scriptural. As with abortion, agricultural regulation, animal husbandry, debt remittance, education, fashion, marriage, sex, and war, I simply refuse to accept that Scriptural interpretation should mandate legal policy. I don’t argue my Scripture’s position on capital punishment (although there are those who do), I just don’t think it’s dispositive. As a result, you may argue all you like whether Scripture demands the death penalty or forbids it, but for me, we have to go by whether it is good policy. Now, that question will be answered by various people according, in part, to how they interpret Scripture, particularly on the thorny ethical questions below, and I am OK with that. I’m just saying that the question ‘is this a correct action for a state to take’ can’t (for me) be answered with Scripture directly.\n

The fourth reason, often derived from Scripture of course, is that it is more just to kill than imprison the murderer. I don’t know how to argue this. My own Scriptural tradition clearly endorses the justice of capital punishment. My problem is that I don’t really understand how to apply ‘justice’ a criterion to punishment. Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that there is justice in the system by which the punishment is applied, to the court system, and to the educational, cultural and economic systems that contribute to individual’s moral preparedness. Let’s assume it, anyway, in the discussion of whether the death penalty is inherently just. How do I decide if it is just to put a killer to death? It doesn’t in any practical sense redress the wrong, as a thief might be put to repaying the victims of his thievery. It may make some of the bereft feel better, emotionally, but it scarcely repairs the damage done them. It doesn’t appear to me to heal the damage done to the community, either to restore it to its earlier state or move it towards a new and healthier one. Not that lifetime imprisonment does any of those things, but there it is. And as for it being just in the sense of fair, in the sense of being an eye for an eye, in having done to them what they did to others, well, I just don’t see that as having much to do with justice. People found guilty of assault aren’t sentenced to be beaten. We don’t rob thieves, we don’t violate rapists (as a policy), we don’t sent fire to arsonists’ houses. We might be fair, but it wouldn’t be just. If I’m to be convinced that killing murderers is just, it will have to be in that context.\n

So. I imagine there are more arguments to be made in favor of capital punishment, but those are the main ones I can think of. And although there is some merit to them, there isn’t enough to overcome much resistance. But what is the resistance? What are the arguments against?\n

Well, the currently hot issue is miscarriage of justice. This seems to me very clear: there are some cases, possibly a lot, possibly very few, where the conviction is in error, and the person killed by the state is innocent. This is horrible to imagine, of course, and there are people for whom this alone is dispositive, at least temporarily. Even one innocent human killed by the state is enough reason to forego capital punishment entirely. I have to admit I’m not convinced by this as general reasoning; we are, after all, fighting a war where we are killing innocent humans. It may well be that in the specific case here the number of innocents and the number of guilty works out to be overwhelming in whatever hideous calculus I would have to use. I’m not even convinced of that at the moment. Still, a lot of people decide on this basis.\n

There are arguments more or less analogous to second argument above, that imposing the death penalty is expensive, or that it leads to trouble in the prisons, or so on. I’ll dismiss those, too; they can be handled.\n

There is the argument that as there is not perfect or even adequate justice in the system by which the punishment is applied, in the court system, and in the educational, cultural and economic systems that contribute to individual’s moral preparedness, and therefore the application of the death penalty is necessarily unjust. Lots of people do argue that, and it’s a good argument for delaying the implementation of the death penalty until those systems become more just. Still, as an argument, it seems odd, as presumably we should be working on making those systems just, which means we end up working toward implementing the death penalty. It’s not an illogical argument, and we can analogize to other fields, say, a supporter of abortion rights may well work for a time when the systems have enough justice and opportunity (for instance, in available contraception or external incubation) to allow for a ban. Or a supporter of affirmative action in college admissions may well work for a time when such preferences would be unnecessary and therefore outlawed. It just strikes me as odd.\n

The last argument is the one Ms. Marcotte raises above. This argument is that killing is simply wrong, and we must be extremely reluctant to do it, either as individuals or through the state. In particular, of course, the individuals who actually do the executions are placed in extreme moral jeopardy, along with corrections workers generally, as are juries and judges and attorneys and so on. But generally, the way I generally phrase it is that I don’t want the state to be in the killing business. It’s a bad business.\n

I want the state to be in the law enforcement business, the relief (or welfare) business (domestically and globally), the research business, the adjudication business, the mediation business, the archive business, the regulation business, the utility business, a whole lot of businesses. I don’t want the state to be in the numbers-running business, or the whorehouse business, or the drug business, or the mail fraud business, or the killing business. That’s a presumption on my part. If you are going to propose that the state should run numbers, you will have a lot to overcome on my part. I may, in the end, choose that as the most ethical action (because my preferred options aren’t feasible, or aren’t yet feasible) for the moment. But there is always a moral cost, there, and the fact that I’m willing to pay it under certain circumstances doesn’t negate that. And, as I’ve said above, what we gain by the death penalties just isn’t worth that cost, in my eyes.\n

Now, the hard part.\n

My own experience of murder concerns a case where someone I love dearly lost a close family member, who was murdered by a close friend (who, as it happened, lived in my love’s family house). My anger at the murderer has not dimmed, and if I joke that he was the least likeable murderer I’ve ever known, it’s just YHB’s way of whistling in a graveyard. When it looked, briefly, as if the incompetence of the police would lead to the murderer’s conviction being overturned on appeal, I was furious. And that’s me, at one remove; the grief for a dead young brother or son doesn’t end. I would be satisfied if the murderer were to be imprisoned his whole life. I would not, actually, be bothered (emotionally) had he been killed, either resisting arrest or as punishment. I wouldn’t be saddened, particularly, if I were to learn today that the fellow had died in prison. I’d probably gloat. When John Salvi died in prison, I was, you know, vaguely concerned about prison conditions generally, but didn’t consider the actual death a loss. When the state of Florida killed Paul Hill, I had no sympathy for Mr. Hill, but I still thought it was the wrong thing for Florida to do. And if the murderer I knew had been killed by the state, I would still have felt the state did the wrong thing, even as I gloated. Heck, if the state of California killed the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles, I’d probably gloat ... but it would be the wrong thing for the state to do.\n

Now, most if not all of my Gentle Readers will be aware that my host just lost his father to a murderer. I can’t say I have any idea how he feels; that’s not what I’m on about. I don’t think I’ve ever even discussed the issue of capital punishment with him. And I’ll go out of my way to point out the obvious: I have no idea what went on or is going on there. All I know is what I read in the papers. But it was in my mind when I read Ms. Marcotte’s column, added to the history I always have there. And I felt that even more than before, I agree with Ms. Marcotte’s formulation, that the reason I don’t want the state to be in the killing business has nothing to do with the people the state kills, but with the state that kills.\n

Anyway, that’s Your Humble Blogger’s take, for now. I’m sure I’m missing lots of arguments on either side, and I’m sure my Gentle Readers will fill me in.\n

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your Humble Blogger happened to see a very interesting column over at Mousewords by the very interesting blogger Amanda Marcotte, who has also been one of the triumvirate that filled in for Jesse Taylor over at Pandagon. Anyway, Ms. Marcotte…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17332,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703\/revisions\/17332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}