DarthWiggle's Journal: Illinois Death Penalty Event

Today Gov. Ryan of Illinois commuted the death sentences of every inmate on Illinois' death row. This is wonderful news for someone who opposes the death penalty - and tragic at the same time. I'll get to my reasons for opposing the death penalty shortly, but first I need to write a bit about the political and social effects of Governor Ryan's act.

I'm actually a little bit unnerved that Ryan would do what he did. He's a lame-duck governor widely regarded as corrupt and facing possible prosecution for that corruption. That's not exactly the spokesman I'd choose to carry the banner of Abolition. What are pro-death advocates going to say? He's got nothing to lose. He's trying to salvage his image by doing this symbolic act. He doesn't know what he's talking about because he's a pharmacist. Death penalty supporters are going to be up in arms to limit the ability of a governor to commute any sentence, and that's really a shame.

I find myself in a peculiar position. By doing what he's done, Ryan has partially emasculated the cause of death penalty opponents in Illinois. Now there's nobody on death row to personify the wrongness of the death penalty. State sponsored killing in Illinois is now entirely an abstract concept, at least until someone is sentenced to death in Illinois under the still-effective death penalty laws. Do you think that now some ambitious prosecutor is going to have tremendous incentive to get a death penalty sentence as soon as possible to re-assert the supremacy of existing law over the "whim" of the state's former chief executive? And so the debate rages on. Ryan didn't do anything effective, except as to the lives of those whose sentences he's now commuted.

Sure, it's established a nifty precedent, but it's precedent with only sentimental weight, dragged down into the morass of politics by Ryan's other activities.

Which is a shame, really. His speech today (January 11) beautifully outlined why the death penalty is wrong. It is arbitrary. It is a violation of the sanctity of human life. It is fraught with the danger that the death penalty may be applied for reasons other than justice. It is, in short, an absolute and perfected punishment governed by the limited and imperfect reason of fallible human beings.

The death penalty represents exactly the sort of vindictive, tribal justice that the rule of law is supposed to replace. Why do we go to court to argue contract disputes? So the parties to that dispute won't go into a back alley to settle their dispute in a duel. Law is supposed to serve the interests of society, not of any one person or group. A law that does serve a particular group must do so only on the understanding that improving (or reducing) the lot of that group will have a consequent beneficial effect on society.

So, who does the death penalty benefit, and what societal improvement results from it?

It would seem that at its base the death penalty serves to placate the suffering victims: to provide them with a vicarious outlet for their rage. An argument can be made that the anger of society is likewise served by killing the killer, but is that true? If that were the case, then it seems logical that the death penalty would be applied globally to all gross wrongs, and certainly to all killings. After all, can't you imagine a situation where a wrong that does not involve a killing creates more social unrest than the killing of a certain person? Is society more upset by the actions of Enron's officers than by the killling of some unknown victim in Alabama? Should - and you should stifle your smart-ass responses here - Enron's officers be put to death to placate society's anger?

If not, and if the death penalty should apply only to horrible killings, whose interests are being served? What benefit derives from the killing of a killer? None. The death penalty removes the killer permanently and thereby eliminates his future threat to society, a death penalty supporter might say. But doesn't an effective and permanent life sentence do the same thing?

I feel no sympathy for persons who kill in horrible ways. (I do, however, feel some sympathy for persons who kill in the heat of passion, under provocation, or because they were unaware of the wrongness of their act.) I think those who kill in terrible ways should be punished in terrible ways. But that punishment should not include death.

This is simply because such a policy reduces the government to an instrumentality of eye-for-eye justice, or precisely the sort of tribal, vindictive justice that law is supposed to supplant. A death penalty government is nothing more than a lynch mob, so organized as to remove the chaos accompanying most lynchings and to insulate society from liability for a vindictive killing. The government, then, is social insurance: a way for society to engage in "bad" behavior without the possibility of suffering consequences from it.

I don't see that as the role of government. I see government as, fundamentally, preserving, protecting, and defending the rights conferred to the citizens by the Constitution, among which is the right to life. Even the most cold-hearted killer has a "zone of dignity" around him guaranteed by the Constitution. It is true that by due process the government can remove a person's rights - incarceration is an example of this.

So why shouldn't the government be allowed to remove the right to life and put to death a person who has, essentially, violated without cause the constitutional rights of another person? I'm forced to admit that the government can in fact void a person's right to life. The Constitution giveth, and the Constitution taketh away.

But a unique feature of our constitutional government is that all governmental acts are subject to recall; no governmental act is absolute. The conflict arises that the death penalty is necessarily a permanent act. A killer cannot be "unkilled" if he is later found to be innocent, or if society later deems his death to be unpalatable. This is a serious problem, because it presents the government with the unsavory choice of acting within its guaranteed powers or restraining itself from using those powers for fear of mistake.

So we confront the problem of justice. It is almost unquestionable that justice requires the punishment of a killer. Both emotion and reason dictate that a wrongdoer should not be permitted to remain free in a civil society where he or she has violated the legal norms of that society. But we face the possibility of a far greater injustice: that the government may exercise its power to cause an absolute effect only to find later that the power was applied incorrectly. Whether the act of putting a prisoner to death is incorrect because of a change in law, exculpatory evidence, or a change in public sentiment is immaterial: we're still left with a dead human being who cannot be brought back to life.

Therefore, while I will certainly argue against the death penalty on moral grounds - namely that it is simply wrong to kill another person - my basic argument against the death penalty is that the government has a duty to exercise restraint in its use of its powers in order to avoid the possibility of greater injustice, especially where existing punitive measures provide effective means to remove the wrongdoer from society.

There is simply no justification for the death penalty, no public good which it can serve which is not otherwise served by other means. It should be abolished.