A Cruel and Unusual Punishment

I stand by my opinions in this rant. And as a side note, I've gained great amusement from watching those who condemn the death penalty in all circumstances struggling to provide justifiable exceptions for the execution of Saddam Hussein.




As you are no doubt getting piss sick of me babbling endlessly about the election, and as by now you will have made the decision of whether to vote and who to vote for, I shall resist the temptation to discuss today’s national trip to the polling station (apart from just there obviously...). In fact, I feel that perhaps my near obsession with exhorting you to vote may have perhaps driven you away from me somewhat. This of course worries me, because I want to feel as if we're one big happy family, and so I've had a good hard think about what I could discuss to perhaps win you back over. And then it came to me in a blinding flash; what better to reduce you to a helpless state of belly laughter than a rant about the death penalty!

My mind has been set thinking along this well trodden path by the ongoing saga of Timothy McVeigh a.k.a. the Oklahoma Bomber. As you may be aware, he is scheduled to be executed on Monday for the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma (being known as the Oklahoma bomber may have given that away to you...) which caused the death of 168 people. Actually, as a side issue, do you remember that incident? Most of America (and the world if we're honest) put the incident down to one of the many extremist groups based in the Middle East. The palpable waves of shock throughout the USA at the discovery that it was an American who looked just like everybody else who had planted the bomb would have been rather amusing were it not for the depth of the xenophobia that it revealed. But that is something for another time...

This is the first federal execution in America for something like 30 years (federal law is sort of like national law whereas state law varies from state to state; several people have been executed under state law, especially in Texas which it may not surprise you to learn had Dubya running it prior to his election as President...) and it has caused something of a stir for a number of reasons. The old debate of "Is this murder sanctioned by the law?" has kicked off in earnest, the possibility of televising the execution itself has also been much discussed and rejected (although it is to be shown over closed circuit TV to the families of his victims; anyone care to take bets as to how long it will take for this footage to debut on the Internet?). We have also, and for me most satisfyingly, had the shortcomings of the FBI quite graphically demonstrated as their failure to disclose thousands of (admittedly non-vital) documents delayed the execution and caused much distress to all concerned.

What interests me in the main is the validity of the death penalty itself. It may (or may not) surprise you to learn that I am very much in favour of the death penalty. Despite my liberal leanings, I think that in certain circumstances, it is fully justified. And the key phrase there is "in certain circumstances"; these circumstances do need further explanation and definition.

In what circumstances can we justify depriving another human being of their life? Whilst it is tempting to say that we could do so for such things as "Being French in a built up area", "Phoning a computer support line without having a clue how a computer works", and "Being fucking stupid". However, as this is a reasonably important subject, I shall approach with something resembling the gravity that it deserves.

Firstly we start with the biggie: Murder. Can we justify the old adage "A life for a life"? I would say that we couldn’t. Man is judged by his fellow man (if you want to get all biblical about it) and man's judgment can be flawed when looking at the evidence available. There are many cases of people being executed for crimes that they did not commit, and I am certainly not advocating a return to that. Nor would I do so for the crime of Rape which, utterly degrading and horrific though it certainly is, has the same potential for miscarriages of justice (if not more so) than murder. As to the current crime that is still punishable by death (treason), this is hopelessly outdated in concept and needs radical overhaul if it is to have any relevance.

Now it may appear that I am going back on what I said earlier in that I have dismissed the main crimes that tend to inspire calls for the return of the death penalty. Well, yes I am dismissing them because most of the appeals for its return on these grounds are formed on the basis of retribution and deterrence. As a deterrent, the death penalty does not work, and I would say that the fact that America continues to have a horrendously high murder rate goes some way to proving that. As a means of retribution...well, I refuse point blank to align myself with the sort of person who bays for the blood of a man condemned. The type of person who *demands* the execution of a criminal (family of the victim excluded) is one step away from lynch mob mentality and as a confirmed humanist, I'd like to think that we all have the potential to evolve away from the darker, reactionary side of our psyche. This sort of attitude (however justified it may be at the time) simply serve to propagate intolerance and hatred.

I personally believe that if there are circumstances that justify the execution of another human being (and I shall detail what I believe they are below) then one should ask for this ultimate sanction with reluctance and with sadness that it is necessary to have a person killed for the good of society. I am paraphrasing Clarence Darrow who expressed this with eloquence that I could only hope to aspire to when he defended the killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in 1924 when I say this. He gave a speech to this effect when summing up his case for not executing the two young men who had committed the savage and senseless murder of a classmate as an intellectual exercise in committing the perfect crime. Both of them were sentenced to life imprisonment despite the frenzied and angry demands for the death penalty by the state. This is how it should be.

As to the types of crime that actually should be punishable by death, my earlier opinions concerning paedophiles will perhaps give you a clue as to what they should be. Basically, truly monstrous and repeatedly committed offences should be punishable. And no, I am not saying that we should keep releasing people until they have committed sufficient crimes to justify execution. I am referring to Serial Killers, Serial Rapists, and Child Sex Offenders. This is a class of criminal that is pathologically and irreversibly compelled to kill, rape, and abuse. There is nothing that we can do to help them, and there is nothing that they can contribute to society other than what we can learn from them through studying them in order to ensure that this cannot happen again. Once this process of study is complete, they should be put to sleep quickly, quietly and painlessly. Timothy McVeigh's death is fast becoming a sideshow, and as long as this remains the case concerning execution, we have no right to call ourselves a civilised society.