Perhaps my thinking came from that old childhood saw: Treat others the way you want to be treated. Doesn’t that work both ways? Surely people who take an innocent life can expect to be similarly snuffed out? That’ll teach them.
Except that it doesn't teach them. The death penalty, everyone agrees, has no bearing on crime levels, and does not deter crime any more than a long prison sentence. And if it isn't a deterrent, then it has only one purpose: retribution.
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I used to think that retribution was safer than reform and rehabilitation. How can you be sure that someone steeped in violence or hate will reform? What is the word of a terrorist, or a rapist-murderer worth, when he promises not to do it again? Why not punish them as well as weed the gene pool?
Except that people are complicated, and time can engineer amazing turnarounds. Offenders sometimes repent and reform. Perhaps they deserve parole, a chance to live their changed lives by walking free; perhaps they deserve to live out their repentance in prison. Either way, the state is not qualified to play god. Nobody is evolved enough, or morally well enough placed, to administer that kind of retribution.
I used to think about justice from the point of view of a victim. It's easier. It is easier to relate to the rights of the innocent bystander than to the rights of the murderer. What does one do with white-hot anger if not let it sear the perpetrator? How does one deal with a world of pain except by throwing it back at the person who caused it? Shouldn't the victim be granted a sense of closure, the satisfaction of knowing that the criminal will probably soil his trousers and scream and struggle as he is led to the gallows?
Except that killing the criminal does not necessarily lessen loss, and certainly creates more loss. Victims do not come back from the dead. Dead criminals do nothing more than reinforce the point that nobody comes back from the dead. There are no shortcuts through the process of loss. Vengeance seems like a good temporary distraction, but at the end of it, the victim still goes home with her loss. What kind of closure is that? And is the uncertain premise that some victims might have a greater sense of closure, enough to put a person to death?
I used to think that people who behave like social vermin - rapists, paedophiles - should be exterminated because who wants to spend tax money on keeping them alive and fed and housed for the rest of their worthless lives?
Except that in California, for example, executing someone costs more than locking them up and throwing away the key. But this is a fundamentally irrelevant point to consider, because the death penalty is not a financial problem, it's an ethical problem.
I used to have faith that the justice system works fairly, independently, and consistently. Take the decision away from the distraught victim, the howling media, the opinionated public, and put it into the hands of impartial, highly trained people. The courts will leach the clouding emotion and irrationality out of a case and consider its merits, using the death penalty rarely and responsibly.
Except that the justice system does not work any more fairly, or independently, or consistently, than any other system. I cannot speak of other countries, but in this country, the courts' decisions too often reflect the caste, class, gender, political and personal biases of society. In this country, lower castes, minorities and the poor feature disproportionately in death penalty cases. In this country, the judiciary is notoriously not impervious to political pressure. In this country, Yakub Memon is hanged but Maya Kodnani walks free.
So it has been many years since I changed my mind about the death penalty. I do not believe that there is a time, or a place, or a use for such an irrevocable act in any society, let alone one so flawed and so increasingly bloodthirsty. Those who advocate for it, often in the mask of the realist or nationalist, agree to forfeit a crucial piece of their own humanity. It is a piece of which a great poet once said: "…it becomes/ The throned monarch better than his crown; / His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, / The attribute to awe and majesty, / Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; / But mercy is above this sceptred sway; / It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, / It is an attribute to God himself; / And earthly power doth then show likest God's / When mercy seasons justice."
The death penalty is just savagery with a bureaucrat's stamp on it. India needs to abolish it.