The Morality of the Death PenaltyThe Morality of the Death Penalty
Politics without a moral base is greed at best, and fascism at worse. Morality
without a political program is mere self-indulgence and worse than useless.
For years, I wavered on the validity of the death penalty as an instrument of law enforcement. I never doubted that there are truly evil people who are responsible for many deaths. I listed them in my mind.
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What finally convinced me that the death penalty was bad public policy was an incident rather than an intellectual conclusion arrived at after much thought. A fellow named Harris was about to be executed for the murder of two teenage boys at the time he stole their vehicle. This was to be the first public execution in California in many decades. The TV news was covering the event and it focused on some individuals having a tailgate party. I realized, at that point, that the main reason for the death penalty was, much like the gladiatorial games of ancient Rome, public entertainment.
I understand blood-lust. It's present in all of us. Some choose to repress it. Some choose to indulge in it in some harmless way such as watching films (The Dirty Dozen is one of my personal favorites). I have no problem with any of this since no one is actually killed. I don't believe that repressing something is always psychologically harmful, despite Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents. Nor do I believe that shooting down Migs in a computer simulation makes a person more violent, or, for that matter, necessarily acts as a safety valve. It may, I simply don't know. We evolved as hunter/gatherers and need targets and competition for fulfillment. That's why sports are popular. It's probably why middle-aged men like me, who are past their competitive prime, enjoy sitting in our underwear on Sundays watching a football game with a can of beer in hand.
The question is where the moral line is drawn. This almost always has to be an individual decision. Law can only draw broad parameters, especially in a heterogeneous society such as ours in the United States. Once this moral line is drawn, the political program is to convince others. For someone such as myself, who has no talent for political organizing, it comes down to writing. Perhaps others will be convinced, or perhaps, if they are already convinced, my arguments will supply them with additional rational weapons.
If people like Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King are to be believed, morality always takes precedence over law. The caveat being that you have to accept punishment if your moral code forces you to violate an existing law. Thus King fought against legal segregation, and Gandhi illegally made salt from the sea. Both men were jailed. We learned how to morally confront government.
While law and morality are distinct, they are not mutually exclusive. In a modern industrial democracy such as ours, there is a great overlap (about 95% in my view). In fact, great accommodation is made to respect morality by law. There is no jurisdiction in this country that will not excuse, for instance, someone opposed to the death penalty from serving on a jury that might impose it.
Societies which do not respect individual morality can be opposed by violence. The German resistance during the Nazi years was morally justified in their actions even though they opposed their own government (that was apparently elected by a majority). Societies which respect individual morality but are simply wrong about some policy, cannot be opposed violently, but may be opposed non-violently on that issue: legal segregation being the archetypical example.
It's not always that cut and dry. Some individuals, who believe abortion is murder have made the moral decision to use violence while most have adopted nonviolent confrontational tactics similar to those used in the civil rights movement. Those who choose violence clearly believe that they've exhausted all other avenues and that an evil of holocaust proportions is present among us. Unlike the German resistance, however, they usually act as individuals (dangerous when using violence since there is no one around to help you filter out your emotions from a rational political program, and to supply the tactical expertise needed to prevent hurting obvious innocents). In addition, the political process is still available to them (they're not going to be shot on the spot if they protest).
It is rare that violence can be morally justified as a political instrument in a modern industrial democracy.
You do not have to be a pacifist to oppose the death penalty. I'm not. But you do have to think out the rules, whatever is permissible by law, under which you will use violence in order to be a moral person. It is legally permissible to kill an intruder into your home in many jurisdictions, but is it always necessary? You can be legally correct and morally wrong.
You do not have to be a political liberal. Some conservatives oppose the death penalty because they don't trust the government to always behave correctly. This is a sound and healthy notion that all of us should adopt.
You do not have to have a religious basis for opposing the death penalty, although that is fine.
Some people, such as myself, believe that if there is a God, he was an itinerant engineer who set up the local system (including our ability to live in society and make moral choices) and moved on to other projects. There is no monitoring. He was never a moral accountant, but was a dedicated humanist. More important than any pie in the sky concept, we should grow up and make our own decisions. We should be especially wary of government officials who claim divine inspiration to justify their actions.
Law should not be considered unimportant morally. It has a great body of experience that no individual can ignore or replicate from his own experience. It serves us well in minimizing violence (a highly moral goal) by settling disputes and controlling criminals. Societies that ignore or minimize the importance of formal law always fall prey to a repressive system of government. Still, a legal system is a human institution that must be monitored. The U.S. is among the best in doing this institutionally, but the U.S. is a working democracy and law often encodes some popular madness. The last line of defense is not the Supreme Court, as important as their function clearly is, but the individual who takes a moral stand.
For myself, running was never an option. I'm not very fast. I don't turn my back since this provokes rage among certain individuals. Males like victories over other males, and turning your back often provokes rage, especially if alcohol or a narcotic is present. But in certain situations, especially for women facing a rapist, running is a perfectly good option. As is screaming or whatever it takes to disorient a potential attacker. Women should never hesitate to run or scream when possible. Often they are nimbler and faster. The first rule, for a woman, is to protect her life, even before protecting her virtue. Killing a rapist to protect herself from being raped is morally permissible. Using deadly force is always permissible if necessary to prevent a murder, rape or serious assault.
For some individuals, having a gun is morally permissible. Not everyone is my size, or has my training. It may be, when I'm older, that this may become morally permissible for me. But if a person chooses that option, he or she has a moral duty to get as much training as possible even when the law does not require it. A gun is a tool, we're always being reminded. Know your tools, and they will serve you well.
I've developed these four rules for myself in the use of violence.
On the other hand, I could never, for instance, hire myself out to guard a jewelry store since I could not morally use violence to prevent someone from stealing such items. I know this gets complicated in that a thief might have a gun and threaten the staff or patrons of the store, but for me, at least, this would be a situation I'd initially avoid. I recall a martial arts instructor telling us that he once allowed a stickup man to take his wallet despite the fact that he was certain that he could have disarmed him. The property was not worth the violence, he told us. Had he thought the stickup man had been anything other than a rational thief, in that he might have harmed him anyway, he would have knocked him down instantly. The instructor was not only skilled, but a moral man.
The reality is somewhat different.
The death penalty may have had some justification in resource-scarce societies. It's an expensive proposition to imprison an individual for life (and some clearly need to be). It may also be justified in unusual situations such in times of total war. But it cannot be morally justified in a modern setting like the United States.
© 1997 by Yves Barbero
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