A Capital Mistake

Last Monday, troubled by the fact that so many people on death row in his state had been proven innocent, Illinois Gov. George Ryan issued a moratorium on executions. Though commendable, this action presupposes that capital punishment is a method we ought to use, that perhaps, if we could change the way it is administered, it would be a desirable method of crime control. However, it is not the potential for racial bias or the risk that people on death row may actually be innocent that makes capital punishment a less than ideal method of crime prevention. Nor is it the fact that we know that capital punishment is not useful as a deterrent. Rather, what states like Michigan and Massachusetts have recognized is that the death penalty is itself inherently unjust and wrong.

The desire to seek the death penalty is a natural response to violent and serious crime, crime that cannot and should not be treated lightly. Such crime cries out for and demands punishment. Punishment, though, is only good inasmuch as it serves to preserve order and safety, redress the wrong done, and--to the extent possible--correct the offender. Only when these three conditions are met does any punishment further the common good, the most basic purpose of all punishment. When we choose the death penalty, what we are choosing is a climate of death. Such a climate is hardly beneficial to the common good, for it robs all of our lives of their sanctity and dignity. What we are doing is responding to violence with violence, saying that the only way to keep ourselves safe, to protect life, is to take it.

When we choose to kill, we are blatantly trampling on the inherent dignity of each and every human being, a dignity found in the fact that every person is created in God's image, even the most hardened criminal. We must denounce the violent crime we see each evening on the news and read each day in the newspaper. We must, and do, sympathize with the victims of these crimes, and we must do what we can to bring about healing. But if we are to create a society in which the lives of all Americans are protected as valuable, then we cannot sanction the killing of any.

Some people say, however, that moral considerations such as these should not be a part of our political debate. This has never been true in American politics, and never will be. When we argue about how to help the poor or how the United States ought to behave in the world, we are making ethical judgements about how we as Americans ought to act. These are indeed fundamentally moral and ethical judgements that in many cases revolve around the dignity of human life.

We begin with our laws against murder, saying that it is wrong to take an innocent life. We believe enough in the dignity of life that we cannot allow those who are underprivileged in our society to lead degrading lives. So we have welfare and Social Security, always two important and controversial political issues. We even believe so much in the dignity of all human life that we have laws against discrimination, saying that all humans, simply because they are human beings, deserve certain rights. To say that questions of human dignity have no place in the American political scene is to deny much of what makes us American.

We are a society that cares about and believes in the dignity of life, yet we sanction capital punishment, allowing it to become so commonplace that it ceases to become a controversial political topic. Each of the major candidates for the presidency supports retaining the death penalty and some even support broadening its use. Texas Gov. George W. Bush leads a state that executes more people each year than any other and is the leading Republican contender. Even both Democratic candidates support its use.

In fact, few even see the necessity of debating the death penalty. Abortion, another area where we fall far short of protecting human life, is at least a hot political topic. Whether it is abortion or capital punishment, each time we condone the execution of another person, we are chipping away at the dignity of all life. It is simply not consistent for us to support the dignity of all with one hand and cut it down with the other.

If we contend that human life is valuable, that we ought to preserve it and that people ought to be punished for taking it or maltreating it, then we cannot and must not allow our states or our federal government to employ the death penalty. We must tell all candidates for public office that, though we must punish our criminals, we cannot make our punishment into vengeance, for then we begin to destroy our laws and ourselves. We have too often seen in the far too recent past the disastrous effects of a culture that breeds violence and death. We can no longer afford to live in a society fascinated with death, watching so many Americans die every year.

Matthew S. Vogel '01 is a sociology concentrator in Kirkland House. He is president of the Catholic Students Association.