Essay/Term paper: Capital punishment

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Political Science

Capital Punishment


By: Omer Kassam

Thesis One: In principle a case can be made on moral grounds both supporting and
opposing capital punishment.

Thesis two: Concretely and in practice, compelling arguments against capital
punishment can be made on the basis of its actual administration in our society.


Two different cases can be made. One is based on justice and the nature of a
moral community. This leads to a defense of capital punishment. The second is
based on love and the nature of an ideal spiritual community. This leads to a
rejection of capital punishment.

JUSTICE AND THE NATURE OF MORAL COMMUNITY

A central principle of a just society is that every person has an equal right to
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Within that framework, an
argument for capital punishment can be formulated along the following lines:
some acts are so vile and so destructive of community that they invalidate the
right of the perpetrator to membership and even to life. A community founded on
moral principles has certain requirements. The right to belong to a community is
not unconditional. The privilege of living and pursuing the good life in society
is not absolute. It may be negated by behavior that undermines the nature of a
moral community. The essential basis on which community is built requires each
citizen to honor the rightful claims of others. The utter and deliberate denial
of life and opportunity to others forfeits ones own claim to continued
membership in the community, whose standards have been so flagrantly violated.
The preservation of moral community demands that the shattering of the
foundation of its existence must be taken with utmost seriousness. The
preciousness of life in a moral community must be so highly honored that those
who do not honor the life of others make null and void their own right to
membership. Those who violate the personhood of others, especially if this is
done persistently as a habit must pay the ultimate penalty. This punishment must
be inflicted for the sake of maintaining the community whose foundation has been
violated. We can debate whether some non-lethal alternative is a fitting
substitute for the death penalty. But the standard of judgment is whether the
punishment fits the crime and sufficiently honors the nature of moral community.


LOVE AND AN IDEAL SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY

Agape, Christian love, is unconditional. It does not depend on the worthiness or
merit of those to whom it is directed. It is persistent in seeking the good of
others regardless of whether they return the favor or even deserve to be treated
well on the basis of their own incessant wrongdoing. An ideal community would be
made up of free and equal citizens devoted to a balance between individual self-
fulfillment and the advancement of the common good. Communal life would be based
on mutual love in which equality of giving and receiving was the norm of social
practice. Everyone would contribute to the best of ability and each would
receive in accordance with legitimate claims to available resources.

What would a community based on this kind of love do with those who committed
brutal acts of terror, violence, and murder? Put negatively, it would not live
by the philosophy of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a
life." It would act to safeguard the members of the community from further
destruction. Those who had shown no respect for life would be restrained,
permanently if necessary, so that they could not further endanger other members
of the community. But the purpose of confinement would not be vengeance or
punishment. Rather an ideal community would show mercy even to those who had
shown no mercy. It would return good for evil. The aim of isolation is
reconciliation and not revenge. Agape never gives up. It is ever hopeful that
even the worse among us can be redeemed so that their own potential contribution
to others can be realized. Opportunities for confronting those who had been hurt
most could be provided to encourage remorse and reconciliation. If a life has
been taken, no full restitution can be made, of course, but some kind of service
to the community might be required as a way of partially making amends.

EVALUATION

Such, in brief, is the argument for and against capital punishment, one founded
on justice and the nature of moral community, the other resting on love and the
nature of an ideal spiritual community. If we stand back from this description
and make an attempt at evaluation, one point is crucial. The love ethic requires
a high degree of moral achievement and maturity. It is more suitable for small,
closely-knit communities in which members know each other personally and in some
depth. Forgiveness and reclamation flourish best in a setting in which people
can participate in each other's lives. If you press the agape motif to its
highest manifestation, it becomes an ethic of non-resistance to evil,
unqualified pacifism, and self-sacrifice in which self-interest is totally
abandoned. The non-resisting Jesus on the cross who surrenders his life to save
others is the epitome of agape at this level.

Love at this point becomes superethical. It is grounded in a deep faith in God
that surrenders any reference to earthly justice. That is the reason for
speaking of love and the nature of an ideal spiritual community. Love of this
kind abandons the right to kill another in self-defense and will refuse
absolutely to kill enemies even in a just war. If made into a social ethic, it
requires the poor to sacrifice for the rich, the sick to sacrifice for the
healthy, the oppressed to sacrifice for the oppressor. It allows the neighbor to
be terrorized, brutalized, and slaughtered, since restraint of the aggressor is
forbidden. All this is indefensible on moral grounds.

To make sense of this, it is helpful to distinguish between an ethical dimension
of love and an ecstatic dimension. Love as an ethical ideal seeks a community
based on mutuality and reciprocity in which there is an equality of giving and
receiving. Mutual love has a justice element in which every person has an equal
claim to fulfillment and an equal duty to be responsible. Ethical love is
unconditional and will reach out to others even when they lack merit. But it
will resist encroachment upon its own equal claim to fulfillment and will repel
if possible any denial of ones own right to be fully human in every respect.
Against the pacifist, ethical love would justify killing in self-defense and
killing enemies in a just war when non-lethal alternatives are unavailable. They
are necessary and tragic emergency means here and now to stop present and
ongoing violence. Capital punishment is opposed since the crime has already been
committed, and isolation can protect society against future violence.

Love in the ecstatic dimension becomes superethical. In ecstasy one is delirious
with impetuous joy in the presence of the other and totally devoted to that
person's happiness and well- being. In ecstasy we do not count the cost to
ourselves but are totally self-giving, heedless of our own needs. In this mood
sacrifice for the other is not an ethical act of self-denial but the
superethical expression of what we most want to do. Ecstasy involves the
unpremeditated overflow of boundless affection and the impulsive joy of
exhilarating union with the loved one. The ecstatic lover dances with delight in
the presence of the beloved. Sensible calculations balancing rights and duties
have no place. Rational ethics has been transcended by spiritual ecstasy.
Ecstatic love expresses itself spontaneously in a certain frame of spirit. Love
expressed in ecstasy gives all without regard to whether the recipient has any
claim on the gift. It is pure grace.

Consider the story of the woman who poured expensive perfume on the feet of
Jesus (Mk. 14:3-9). She was displaying love in the ecstatic dimension. Some
present were thinking ethically. They complained that this perfume could have
been sold and the proceeds given to the poor. On ethical grounds they were right.
What the woman did was indefensible as a moral act. It was irrational and
superethical. This deed flowed spontaneously from ecstatic love.

Love has both an ethical and an ecstatic or superethical dimension, and we
should not confuse the two. It is quite clear, however, that ecstatic agape
cannot be the norm of large, impersonal societies. A corporation cannot exist on
the basis of forgiving seventy times seven an incompetent employee whose
repeated ineptness is costing thousands of dollars. Ecstasy is not even the mode
in which we can live all the time in the most exemplary family life with spouses
and children. Ecstatic love is an occasional, fabulous, wonderful overflowing of
spectacular affection that adds immeasurably to the joy of life, but it cannot
be the day to day standard for ordinary life even in the family or the church.

Can Christian love in the ethical sense be an appropriate norm for a large,
secular, pluralistic, civil society? Can unconditional love for the other that
regards the welfare of the neighbor equal with ones own be the ideal expected of
the citizens of New York or the United States? Surely, to agree with Reinhold
Niebuhr, that would be to hope for an "impossible possibility." Ethical love is
a description of ideal life in the family, in the church, and other small
communities in which unconditional regard for each other can be lived out in
face-to- face relationships. Even in these settings, we will often fail, but we
can hold it up as the criterion by which we are judged and to which we aspire
even in our shortcoming. In this sense, ethical love is the supreme norm that
serves as both goal and judge of all conduct. Realistically, however, we can
hope only for some rough approximation with decreasing levels of attainment as
we move away from intimate communities toward larger collectives. Nation states
are not likely, even occasionally, to become ecstatic in their devotion to each
other! Mutual, not even to mention sacrificial, love is hardly the guiding rule
of relations between General Motors and Toyota, nor does either have aspirations
in that direction.

A workable ethical standard for the state and the nation will appeal to the
ideals defined by justice and the requirements of a moral community. To say it
otherwise, ethical love expressed as social policy for large, impersonal
societies takes the form of justice. What that norm involves for New York or the
United States as secular, pluralistic societies cannot be spelled out here.
Within this framework a strong but debatable case can be made for capital
punishment. Pragmatically and politically, of course, Christians have to work
within the framework of justice as defined by the secular society in which they
have their citizenship and seek to transform it in the light of their own ideals.


PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

This brings me to thesis two. The most compelling arguments against capital
punishment can be made on the basis of its actual administration in our society.
I will list five of the usual points.

1. The possibility of error. Sometimes a person might be put to death who is
innocent.

2. Unfair administration. Capital punishment is inflicted disproportionately on
the poor and minorities.

3. Weakness of the argument from deterrence. The claim that the threat of
capital punishment reduces violent crime is inconclusive, certainly not proven,
extremely difficult to disprove, and morally suspect if any case.

4. The length of stay on death row. If there were ever any validity to the
deterrence argument, it is negated by the endless appeals, delays,
technicalities, and retrials that keep persons condemned to death waiting for
execution for years on end. One of the strongest arguments right now against
capital punishment is that we are too incompetent to carry it out. That
incompetence becomes another injustice.

5. Mitigating circumstances. Persons who commit vicious crimes have often
suffered from neglect, emotional trauma, violence, cruelty, abandonment, lack of
love, and a host of destructive social conditions. These extenuating
circumstances may have damaged their humanity to the point that it is unfair to
hold them fully accountable for their wrongdoing. Corporate responsibility
somehow has to be factored in to some degree. No greater challenge to social
wisdom exists than this.

The conclusion of the matter is that the present practice of capital punishment
is a moral disgrace. The irony is that the very societies that have the least
right to inflict it are precisely the ones most likely to do so. The compounding
irony is that the economic malfunctions and cultural diseases in those same
societies contribute to the violence that makes it necessary to unleash even
more repression and brutality against its unruly citizens to preserve order and
stave off chaos. To the degree that society provides opportunities for all
citizens to achieve a good life in a sensible culture, it is reasonable to
believe that the demand for capital punishment will be reduced or eliminated.
The fact that our prisons are so full is the most eloquent testimony imaginable
of our dismal failure to create a good society. Massive incarceration indicates
the bankruptcy of social wisdom and social will. It points to the shallowness of
our dedication to solving the basic problems of poverty, moral decay,
meaninglessness, and social discord. Meanwhile, our leaders divert our attention
with the alluring fantasy that capital punishment will make our citizens more
secure against violent crime.

THE CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN WITNESS

What, then, is the role of the church? It is two-fold.

(1) Ideally and ultimately, followers of Jesus are the salt of the earth, light
of the world, leaven in the secular loaf. As such, Christians go into the world
with the aim of moving, lifting, and luring society in the direction of ethical
love. The vocation of Christians is to hold up ethical love as "a transcendent
gauge exhibiting the moral defects of society and thus spread the infection of
an uneasy spirit" (A. N. Whitehead). In particular, Christians should work to
overcome the larger injustices, social disarray, and cultural illness that
create an atmosphere conducive to violence. This work will involve both
political action and cultural transformation.

(2) Pragmatically and immediately, Christians will translate ethical love into
mandates of secular justice and work for the best approximation of the norm that
is possible under given circumstances. Hence, Christian witness may be but is
not necessarily directed against capital punishment on moral grounds in
principle. The choice is a matter of practical discernment and social wisdom in
a particular situation.Christians should insist that if capital punishment is to
be practiced, it must be administered in a just way. On this count, present-day
society fails miserably. My prediction is that a society that becomes sensitive
enough to make sure that the death penalty is administered in a just way will
then do away with it altogether in favor of more humane practices such as life
imprisonment with no possibility of parole.

In short, for the moment the Christian witness to society is this: first
demonstrate that capital punishment can be administered in a just and efficient
manner. Then we will debate with you as to whether capital punishment is in
principle necessary, fitting, and right or whether a humane society will find
non-lethal alternatives to protect citizens from persistently violent criminals.
Until then the church should say "no" to this extreme measure.