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Ottawa Jun 13, 2001
I have a long-standing intellectual interest in the subject of capital punishment and would like to comment on your June 12, 2001 column (Opposed: It weakens our collective safety) in the National Post.
First, let me make a personal observation on
the heading chosen for your short essay. When I arrived in Canada thirty some
years ago, I learned about the mystical belief of the locals in their gendarmes
which struck me strange because where I came from the cops had generally bad
reputation. The local lore which said that 'the Mounties always get
their man' implied a sense of security about the country's law enforcement such
that I had not known. The Mounties had exemplified professional state force,
tough, implacable and yet disciplined and fair. 'Getting their man' did not
imply that he was going to be hacked to pieces or even mistreated once they had
him in custody. Their job was to deliver their man to the justice system. The
people who were telling me about with pride about the Mounties were sighing, or
flushed with anger when talking about the Liberal government which
suspended executing the country's most depraved criminals. It seemed to me then
as it seems to me now that for the common man or woman on the street having the
death penalty on the books (and used, from time to time), confers a distinct
sense of security. So, difficult as it may be for the pony-tailed lawyer or the
psychiatrist with a facial tick to understand, the simple-minded folks
understand justice as 'what comes around'. The most sobering comment about our
collective psyche is that 78% of Americans supported the state euthanazing
Timothy McVeigh.
To answer your 'important' question about
the surgical needles which were used to kill Mr McVeigh: yes, you are probably
right, they were sterilized. If that seems absurd to you, perhaps you
should allow that the sterilization in this case was for the benefit of the
staff administering the euthanasia. Strange that you would not think of that.
I have a problem with the train of your
reasoning here. I am in favour of capital punishment but I belong to those who
advocate a restricted use of it in exemplary cases of wanton destruction of
life. I believe that the form of execution that MrVeigh underwent is the correct
one, and that while the state has the obligation to execute death warrants for
crimes such as his it also has the duty to do so in a most humane way at its
disposal. I don't understand your complaint.
If it must, the state should dispatch the
prisoner by inflicting minimum of physical suffering on him or her. This
principle hes been scrupulously observed since the dawn of civil society. Inspired by
the Enlightement philosophes, Catherine the Great prohibited the
scourging of captured Emmelian Pugachev, her great rival and an exceptionally
brutal mass murderer and terrorist. The chivalry codes, both Occidental and
Oriental, expressly denied the knight 'the pleasure in killing'. It was an act
of necessity, which should be executed without anger or glee. The code of honour
also forbade the killing of fools. From this moral dictum the 'insanity plea'
has arisen. Interestingly, it was first sucessfuly argued in England in a case
of attempted regicide.
G.B.Shaw's view that capital
punishment equals the murder it sanctions is obviously flawed both logically and
morally. I have already observed that killing humans does not imply
derogation of them as human beings. Indeed the law, in its painful slowness, is
coming to realize that unauthorized euthanasia cannot be equated with murder,
since murder implies hostility towards the victim and euthanasia does not.
Whatever Dr Kworkian is, he is not a murderer. All cultures around the world recognized in the past the need for the state to kill dispassionately in order to prevent acts of spontaneous
revenge which almost always carry a risk of escalating violence. On the moral
side, I simply do not understand a posture which equates the act of lethal
aggression with a desire for the destruction of the one who has
inflicted it. The aggressor's act is that of volition, motivated specifically
by malevolence, or reckless disregard for life. It is that act which has
been "tabooed" by all moral codes. The Old Testament makes it clear that "Thou
shalt not kill' means "woe to the aggressor !" (e.g.Exodus 21:12). In contrast,
the state's lawful killing in response is a defensive measure, one uniquely
concerned with discharging justice as a means of restoring peace in the
community. An ancient legal principle states that the killing of a tyrant is
not a crime. That would give the friends or kin of a slain victim the legal
grounds to kill the perpetrator but these must be routinely ceded to the state,
if a society is to remain civilized. The state then has an obligation to act on
the complaint, i.e. to examine the act in order to determine if the offence was
capital. If it decides beforehand that no matter what happened, a capital crime
was not committed, then it is not a just state. As long as people kill each
other, the state has a duty to consider a capital punishment an option. It
should be used correctly, that is to say with restraint, but must be used for
the system to retain credibility as an even-handed,
competent arbiter.
In one of the most moving essays on capital
punishment George Orwell observed a condemned prisoner nimbly side-stepping a
puddle on his way to the gallows. The idea of killing a healthy human being, of
course, can be maddening. I do not accept the argument which says that because
capital punishment is non-reversible, it is unjust. We drive cars and fly planes
knowing full well that we are taking risks with our lives. Yet the anguish of
the condemned man needs to be grasped and contemplated, and the risks of
inflicting such agonies on innocent people properly weighed. Such
exercise will reduce the margin by which Justice prevails over
Pity.
There is of course another, much more powerful
element, that assures me that the pro-capital stance is moral and necessary. Strangely, important as the 'self-inclusive morality' in the debate is, it does not get discussed much. In saying that I believe in death penalty I am saying that if - God forbid - I ever was to kill unlawfully, then I
know I could forfeit my own life. So, what I am saying is that I know that the
life of another human is as precious as my own. In my stated belief in capital punishment then there
is a pledge to respect human life and the collateral here is my own license to
breathe. Now I often wonder how the abolitionist moralists fly past this one
! Help me out, will you ? Are you saying that you could never murder yourself,
that there is no such possibility ? Or are you simply saying: 'you could
not possibly do unto me as I would do unto others' ? Now, I would admit I am
terribly mistaken if you can show me that this is not the ethical crux of the
matter !
