This is
cross-posted from my home blog.
This is the argument that is often touted as a defense of the penalty. I'm thinking about this today, while Tookie's life hangs on the balance of a faded Hollywood actor.
I have to admit, I was trawling around for a few links for this post this morning, to show the various sids of the issue, when an opinion editorial stopped me dead in my tracks. It was a reminder of how even the United States Government has been unable to refrain from the inherent hypocracy that is the modern death penalty.
More on the flip.
The author, Dr. Moss David Posner, outlines the core issue in seeking clemency for Tookie:
If murder and the death penalty that follows is moral, then no action, no penitence, no profound accomplishment, no influence on humanity can matter.
The question he raises here is if there is crime, there must also be punishment, regardless of any attempts to self-rehabilitate. Justice must be measured and meted out with almost clinical detactment. This appears to be what we, as Americans, are asking of the criminal justice system.
Then Dr. Posner reminds us of more heinous crimes than the ones of which Tookie stands convicted, crimes (experiments) committed by the Nazi regime by scientists:
"These among other things consisted of putting Jews into chambers where the pressure was lowered until they died, screaming, tearing out their hair. Autopsies done on these people, killed at various degrees of negetive pressure, allowed establishment of the precise levels of human endurance."
Lest anyone think otherwise, these research results were not abandoned. They were used heavily by the United States during out space program to help us develop safe spacecraft and protect the lives of our astronauts.
Not just the research notes were saved:
"Operation Paperclip was the covert operaton of the 1950's which brought to this country arch criminals of the Third Reich whom, there is no doubt, would have been condemned to death by the Nuremburg Court."
Men who brutally murdered countless Jews in the name of science were spared because they still were useful. Is this a proper basis for morality? This man can live, despite having killed by causing internal organs to explode under pressure simply because the murders he committed have some scientific value? Dr. Posner answers that, as well:
"If we are to save these people - Tookie, Nazis, and all -- then we of necessity admit that it is the utility of a human being to others that determins his fate, not his intrinsic worth as a human being."
Does this mean that we can now create some sort of economic chart of our death row inmates to determine if they should live or die? Drug addict, never graduated high school? On with the execution! Wrote a best selling novel? Wait a minute, we might want to save this guy...
This doesn't work for me, and it doesn't appear to work for Dr. Posner either:
"All of which ultimately brings us right down to the morality of the death penalty. If we are to resolve this in any way and be able to live with our decisions - which is to say - not be hypocrites or cynics, the only logical position that is left open to us is to condem - the death penalty."
We gain nothing when a man dies. We have the potential to gain everything by their lives. In this season of hope and joy, this is the message we need to remember. And not just today, but tomorrow and always. We only gain by people's lives. We only lose by their deaths.
Amen.