Suddenly, the death penalty is back on the menu and as ever,
a majority of people want it. I can understand why they want it, just as I can
understand why people want to believe in life after death. It makes them feel
better. It would make us a more barbaric society, but that wouldn’t matter to
those who support the death penalty.
What else would it achieve? The death penalty could be
regarded as a deterrent. Well, it is probably true that no one who has ever
been executed has gone on to commit another crime. Would it act as a deterrent
to those still only thinking about committing murder? If it did, US states that have
abolished capital punishment would have higher murder rates than those that retain it. They don't. They have lower rates. No one commits a murder because the penalty is only life imprisonment and that’s
okay. They commit murder, or rape, or burglary or speeding offences, because
they don’t expect to get caught, so penalties are irrelevant. It’s the likelihood of being caught that would
make the difference.
But the majority of murders don’t involve rational
calculation. They involve blind rage, panic or stupidity and the thought what
might follow doesn’t come into it. Murderers can be calculating if they are
terrorists, of course, but if their ultimate personal goal is martyrdom, I don’t
see why we should use the machinery of the justice system to oblige them. Much more
irritating to them to shoot them in the legs and cart them off to hospital.
There is the argument that the death penalty would satisfy ‘justice.’
An eye for an eye. The theory is that if someone takes a life, justice requires
they should pay with their own. There’s a major flaw in this argument. There’s a tin of baked beans at my local
supermarket. Its price is on the shelf. If I am willing to pay that price, I am
entitled to have the baked beans. It’s a matter of commerce. Life, death and
murder don’t fit in this model. The price of murder is death? What if I am
willing to pay with my own life? Does that entitle me to murder someone else? Murder
can’t be paid for. It is beyond price.
There is the notion that the death penalty would bring
closure to the survivors of the victim. Yes, I imagine that if someone I loved
were murdered, in my grief and rage I would want the murderer hanged, drawn and
quarter, boiled in oil, slow roasted, flayed alive, torn apart by horses. I
would probably also want to be dead myself. Should the state kill the murderer
in order to satisfy my desire for revenge and kill me to satisfy my suicidal
urges? Or should it help me through both, back to something resembling sanity?
The only rational argument for capital punishment that might
make any sort of logical sense is the argument that killing murderers would
save time, space and money in comparison with keeping them in prison for years.
Then save even more money by disposing of the old and disabled too.
No, there really is no rational argument for capital
punishment, but that won’t stop people demanding it, because it would make them
feel better. It would make them feel empowered in a world where bad things
happen outside their control. To restrain someone, render him utterly helpless,
even denying him the possibility of suicide, so that we can then, coldly and
ceremonially, put him to death; what
greater sense of power can there be? As any serial killer can probably testify.
