Are you for or against the state killing people for a criminal offense?
I really don't know myself, so I decided to use this week's Cant to find out.
I certainly believe that people should die in certain circumstances. I have a long list of acts that merit being snuffed. On a bad day, I add littering and playing in a garage band across the street to the list of crimes that deserve a long and painful death. But let's focus on the crimes that society as a whole has decided deserves death. Most of them I agree with. If there is absolutely no doubt about the person's guilt, then off with his head!
The problem I have is that I personally cannot be 100% sure that someone is guilty.
What would it take for me to be absolutely certain? It would have to be more than faith in our system of justice. Much of my life and the way I perceive existence is based on faith. I can believe that the earth is a sphere without rocketing into space to see it for myself. I can believe that muons, leptons, and bozons go flying after a matter/antimatter collision without shrinking myself ultra-Alice-style and watching it with my own eyes, which would be about the size of a photon making it difficult to "see" anything anyway. But these leaps of faith don't require anyone to die.
Take Charles Manson. That is one sick dude. Sometimes I wonder why he hasn't sucked on cyanide fumes yet. Sharon Tate was a beautiful woman. I'm sure that the baby she was carrying would've been just as gorgeous. All of the lives that Manson and his grisly crew have been convicted of ending cry out for retribution. Even a generation removed, the crimes and subsequent trials still resonate with sick energy, attracting those of feeble mind and black heart. Still, I don't think I could push the button or throw the switch.
Now if I watched a person kill someone close to me, my whole discussion would collapse. All compunctions would melt away like wax under a blowtorch. I would not wait for justice to take its course or forgive those who had trespassed against me. I would do everything in my power to see that the guilty party croaked.
Let's move beyond my own sphere of influence. It's very unlikely that I'll preside over an execution or turn into Arnold Schwarzenegger to avenge my family.
Is the death penalty a deterrent? I think so, but not as strong as some people believe. I'm pretty sure that the crank-crazed ex-boyfriend who stabs his former girlfriend, her new beau, and her two children isn't too worried about execution via lethal injection twelve years from now if he's ever caught, convicted, and pushed through death row. Even without such trappings of justice, folks around the world continue to kill people, commit adultery, say "Jehovah", and do all sorts of things that have their neighbors buying two points, two flats, and a packet of gravel.
How about the death penalty as catharsis? Knowing that a monster like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, or Jeffrey Dahmer is dead allows society to give a collective sigh of relief. Heck, I think Richard Allen Davis, convicted killer of Polly Klaas, should be exterminated just for his disgusting crudeness during his trial. Still, I look at some places where capital punishment is popular (Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Texas) and I sure wouldn't want to live there.
We've progressed from public beheadings. We don't break people on the wheel. Things are definitely better than they used to be, but death still is the ultimate finality. To be wrongly convicted of a crime is life-altering. To be wrongly executed, is life-ending.
So, I have to say that, right now, I'm against capital punishment. Get back to me in a few months, after my son has been born. I might be singing a completely different tune.
Paheha