I agree with Mr. Auster’s views regarding the death penalty. But first let me add that I am a criminal attorney in South Florida and I have been involved in capital litigation for the last 12 of my 19 years in practice. So I know a little bit about the death penalty, the nature of the process and the people who end up on death row. Until 1998, I shared the liberal view that the death penalty was unjust because it did not deter future crimes of violence and was applied in a racially discriminatory manner. In 1998, however, I was the “second chair” in an extremely horrific murder case where the victim was a nine year old boy. The “second chair” lawyer is primarily responsible for the presentation of mitigation evidence in the “penalty phase” in the event of a conviction during the so called “guilt phase.”

My client was a Hispanic immigrant who had come to the U.S. five years before his arrest. While interviewing him in jail during the trial, I suddenly realized that he was fundamentally evil. Prior to that moment, my view of him had been colored by a thick layer of psychological analysis. I had seen him only as the product of a terrible childhood in a third world country; he was a theoretical construct rather than a human being with a soul who would one day face a final judgment. On one particularly memorable occasion I sensed a demonic presence in the room and it became apparent to me that this individual was somehow inhuman, that he was the object of some dark force. The defendant was eventually convicted and is now on Florida’s death row. The experience I had was so profound that I returned to the Catholic faith which I had neglected for many years. I have since realized that the Left’s opposition to the death penalty has little to do with the “social justice” rhetoric in which it is couched. The Left opposes capital punishment because it rejects the existence of an absolute moral order; the death penalty is an absolute moral judgment for the commission of evil. The notion that ontological evil exists and that some individuals deserve to die for heinous crimes because they have violated a cosmic law completely contradicts the belief system of those who feign a higher sympathy for the plight of the criminal.

It is quite ironic that Mr Alvarez would choose another unprincipled exception to explain his conversion. He is absolutely right in saying that the left’s opposition to capital punishment is based on their rejection of a real moral order. However the main thing I would like to point out is Mr Alvarez does shed some light as to how liberalism has managed to crawl over the world as quickly and insidiously as it did. The most successful unpricipled exceptions are those like Mr Alvarez’s in that they represent some easily disgestible cliche that is then used to prove, logically or otherwise, a given point by clicking a nerve in our brains, Making some people cling to a moral falsehood literaly because they feel like doing so, rather than trying to look for an ethical reason to back it up. If the defendant was a sweet looking, sweet talking, young woman who says she loves god like Carla Faye Tucker, would Mr Alvarez have thought differently? Being beautiful in no way has any thing to do with justice, but it has everything to do with the shelf life and saleability of any unprincipled exception.

I think we give the Left too much credit when we explain their opposition to the death penalty solely on the basis of their rejection of this or that principle. When the Left is fully and absolutely in charge, they slaughter their enemies with impunity.

A more practical reason is that they are at war with our social order and our entire civilization. For that purpose, it serves tactical ends for (politically correct) criminals, even or especially the most vile and dangerous, to escape punishment—hopefully altogether as in going free, but to any extent possible. Anything to disrupt and forestall the lawful pursuit of legitimate government conduct.

If they can’t free a murderer altogether (assuming he’s a politically correct murderer of course!) they still win if they can at least keep him out of the chair. The pursuit of justice is thwarted, and the community is demoralized, confidence in our institutions is lowered. And if the criminal is released, all the better; he is then free to wreak more havoc, thus further degrading society. All of this works toward the final strategic end of the Left.

The arguments they use against the death penalty are incredibly silly and designed to confuse and misdirect. Asserting that it’s not a deterrent is such an one. Even if this were true, which it is not, it’s irrelevant. Aside from the moral issue of plain justice, the practical argument comes down to this: the death penalty prevents recidivism, and it accomplishes that objective with 100% success.

The taking of a human life, even that of a person who has committed a terrible crime, cannot be reduced to the simplistic binary logic of black and white. The decision is not based solely on the nature of the act committed, one must also consider the life of the person who the state intends to kill. Human beings are certainly accountable for their actions, but they are not reducible to their actions. This is why a jury is required to consider evidence of mitigation in capital cases. The defendant’s entire life is on trial when he/she is facing the death penalty. The point I was trying to make in my previous comment was that the Left’s opposition to the death penalty is predicated on a worldview that is incompatible with a Christian worldview. It is ultimately a question of incommensurable ontologies. Mr. Avogadro seems to imply (or perhaps I have misunderstood him) that my change in perspective was due to aesthetic considerations, i.e. my client was unattractive and sinister while Carla Faye Tucker was seemingly sweet and professed Christianity. Perhaps Ms. Tucker should have been spared? If she had indeed been transformed by her faith and her repentance was genuine, would Mr. Avogadro automatically disallow mercy? Every human being bears the image and likeness of his creator, as did Cain, who God spared. While the secular authorities have every right to kill those who have committed heinous offenses, the basic humanity of the accused cannot be eradicated even by his own hand. Should we not consider the life of the person we are killing in an effort to determine whether it should be spared? Or, must we automatically kill everyone who commits a murder, regardless of the circumstances and qualities of each individual offender?

At any rate, if Mr. Avogadro considers that my thoughts on the matter are unprincipled, then I hope he will be charitable with me and reconsider.

Mr. LeFevre writes:
“I think we give the Left too much credit when we explain their opposition to the death penalty solely on the basis of their rejection of this or that principle. When the Left is fully and absolutely in charge, they slaughter their enemies with impunity.”

Indeed. Leftist sympathy shown to criminals currently on death row is like leftist sympathy for Islamofascists. That sympathy arises from the fact that those particular actors are enemies of the traditional order and are not perceived as an immediate threat to the liberal order; they are therefore automatically members of the unjustly oppressed. So long as they are enemies of the traditional order they must be understood and liberated, technologically manipulated to remove the residual effects of history so that they can join the new free and equal superhuman race.

Once a group is shown to be a viable enemy of the liberal order and to actually threaten its hegemony, however — once shown to be oppressor-untermenschen standing in the way of the emergence of the free and equal new man — it will be exterminated without mercy, pity, or remorse.

It would not be the least bit surprising, if and as the emnity between tradition and liberalism becomes more acute, for the liberal side to adopt a “moderated” position in favor of the death penalty for “hate crimes”.

I would just like to add one additional point. I agree with Mr. Auster’s and Mr, Avogadro’s assertion that “the absolute transgression of the moral law and the attack on society that murder represents” is the basis for capital punishment. However, we come to truly appreciate this moral principle through life experience, not by meditating on Platonic forms. In my case, it was an experience of discernment while representing a particular defendant which caused me to apprehend the bankruptcy of moral relativism and social utopianism. The experience, in other words, occasioned an intellectual insight. Fr. Bernard Lonergan had much to say about how our experiences bring about moral and theological gestalts. Perhaps Officer Malchik unwittingly made a valid point. If the members of the state legislature could personally experience the appalling reality of a murder, some of the relativists might be converted.

Mr Alvarez, I mean no critism to your views in my earlier post. I was not trying to comment on the morality of the death penalty or anything to do with the justice system. I apologise if that was not clear. I was merely trying to shed light on the mechanisms that the liberals use to sway the public and how they work. Your first post happened to be a fairly good example as to how even the best of people made to first interpret the unprincipled exception rather than the trend. The way this is done is through purely aesthetic factors. Carla Faye Tucker was guilty as was your defendant. Why would most people support the death penalty for your defendant but plead mercy for Miss Tucker. Why was Carla Faye Tucker used as the unprincipled exception rather than your defendant. No offense meant, but from what I gather, your return to god and your post on this webpage is the result of your defendants evil qualities. It is good that this incident brought you closer to god and good sense, but this incident could well have worked the other way. For the many people which have not seen the full nature of these issues, having only seen the Carla Faye Tuckers, it already has worked to the detriment of our society.

My own experience of apostasy from liberalism was driven by the fact that a few of my unprincipled exceptions, to which I was very attached, overpowered the foundational libertarianism-by-default that lay beneath my political thinking. Well, that and a kick in the teeth by Mr. Kalb and a well-learned lesson in logic.

Remember that often for a particular liberal his alliegence to his unprincipled exceptions is actually _stronger_ than his alliegence to liberalism. The reason liberalism has such social power is because it represents the _default_ for things that a particular person does not care about, or does not know much about, or hasn’t spent any time considering. Liberalism’s strength comes from its status as the _default_: as the place to go for an answer when you don’t have a better reason (i.e. when the issue in question is not one of your unprincipled exceptions). Ten people deeply care about the conservative side of an issue, ten people deeply care about the liberal side, and ten thousand invoke the liberal default. So the liberal side always wins in the end in a swarm-of-defaults.

I think our approach to dealing with liberals’ unprincipled exceptions ought not be to find them objectionable. Rather it ought to be to demonstrate what they are: exceptions to liberalism _that, if accepted as resting on something authoritative, actually falsify liberalism_. My bet is that most liberal apostates, like myself, abandoned liberalism precisely because it became obvious that either the unprincipled exception (that is, the illiberal value) or the liberalism had to go.

This isn’t a process for us to disdain; it is a process that represents our hope. It represents repentance. It represents the _only_ way for liberalism to come to an end without violently destroying itself and taking the remains of our civilization with it.

Mr Alvarez, I mean no critism to your views in my earlier post. I was not trying to comment on the morality of the death penalty or anything to do with the justice system. I apologise if that was not clear. I was merely trying to shed light on the mechanisms that the liberals use to sway the public and how they work. Your first post happened to be a fairly good example as to how even the best of people made to first interpret the unprincipled exception rather than the trend. The way this is done is through purely aesthetic factors. Carla Faye Tucker was guilty as was your defendant. Why would most people support the death penalty for your defendant but plead mercy for Miss Tucker. Why was Carla Faye Tucker used as the unprincipled exception rather than your defendant. No offense meant, but from what I gather, your return to god and your post on this webpage is the result of your defendants evil qualities. It is good that this incident brought you closer to god and good sense, but this incident could well have worked the other way. For the many people which have not seen the full nature of these issues, having only seen the Carla Faye Tuckers, it already has worked to the detriment of our society.

Mr Alvarez, I mean no critism to your views in my earlier post. I was not trying to comment on the morality of the death penalty or anything to do with the justice system. I apologise if that was not clear. I was merely trying to shed light on the mechanisms that the liberals use to sway the public and how they work. Your first post happened to be a fairly good example as to how even the best of people made to first interpret the unprincipled exception rather than the trend. The way this is done is through purely aesthetic factors. Carla Faye Tucker was guilty as was your defendant. Why would most people support the death penalty for your defendant but plead mercy for Miss Tucker. Why was Carla Faye Tucker used as the unprincipled exception rather than your defendant. No offense meant, but from what I gather, your return to god and your post on this webpage is the result of your defendants evil qualities. It is good that this incident brought you closer to god and good sense, but this incident could well have worked the other way. For the many people which have not seen the full nature of these issues, having only seen the Carla Faye Tuckers, it already has worked to the detriment of our society.

I would say that Mr. Alvarez experienced, through the concrete particular evil of a concrete particular person, the transcendent universal essence of evil. As I see it, Officer Malchik’s experience is different from that and did not lead to a transcendent essence, though I may be wrong.

On the reason for liberals’ opposition to the death penalty, I think that both explanations are true. Some liberals sincerely oppose capital punishment because they don’t believe in God or in a truth higher than man. Other liberals or leftists might support capital punishment once they themselves were in power, but it would be on the basis of their own power and the necessity of wiping out the remnants of the oppressive ubermenschen, not on the basis of transcendent morality.

Mr. Avogadro, thank you for the clarification and your kind words. You are absolutely correct about the way that Carla Faye Tucker was exploited by death penalty opponents. Similarly, a handful of DNA exonerations are now being used to manipulate the public into believing that our justice system is so dysfunctional that most of the inmates on death row might be innocent. Unfortunately, the masses worship images and abhor reason and the Left is expert at using the media to mold public opinion.

I agree with Matt. The unprincipled exception is both good and bad. The unprincipled exception is good insofar as it represents, within liberal society, the only way of slowing or opposing the advance of liberalism, and, as Matt points out, may even offer a doorway out of liberalism if the person discovers a principle underlying his unprincipled exception. The unprincipled exception is bad insofar as, so long as it remains an unprincipled opposition to liberalism, it cannot stop the ongoing advance of liberalism and thus is a phony opposition to liberalism which actually assures liberalism’s ultimate triumph. As long as the exception remains unprincipled, it is mere footdragging, or what Rabbi Schiller called kvetch and retreat.

“They’ve never smelled it, looked at it, felt the weight of a dead body in a body bag.”, the detective said.
One more body bag, the one that will contain the dead body of the rapist and killer, will make things any better? Is it going to resurrect victims? Is it goint to make victim’s families happier? Who is going to feel better, or even more important, who is going to be better, after the execution?

I have a question for Mr. Alvarez. Why, in dealing with the case that led to his change of heart, did he ever consider it important that his client might have had a “terrible childhood in a third world country?”

Mr. Levine, I will try to answer your question as succinctly as I can.

Since the mid-1970s constitutional law has required that capital juries must consider, among other things, the background and character of the defendant. Complex social histories are crafted based on counseling with members of the prisoner’s family, loved ones, and friends in order to uncover intimate information which could be critical to the litigation. The investigation must cover the inmate’s childhood, family life, education, relationships, important experiences, and overall psychological make-up. My client’s childhood and development were greatly affected by the conditions in his country of origin and it was thus legally relevant to the issue of punishment.

I’d like to thank Mr. Alvarez for his answer and the insights it affords into our legal system. Am I the only person who finds those insights horrifying?

Dear Mr. Levine, I am sorry that you find the fact that juries must consider a capital defendant’s background a horrifying matter. When a jury is asked by the State to kill a defendant, the jury must take his humanity into account, which means that it must have some idea about who he is, not just what he did. You may find the Vatican’s view on the matter even more disturbing. John Paul II, as you may know, has called for the abolition of the death penalty in all but the rarest of cases. The Holy Father’s rationale in Evangelium Vitae was that the death penalty has become part of the culture of violence and death which Americans seem to take for granted. He argued that reliance on the use of the death penalty creates a greater harm to society by reinforcing the idea that violence is a solution to society’s problems. The death penalty will not overcome violent crime any more than abortion will end the problem of unwanted pregnancy or euthanasia will solve the problems of aging and illness.

Considering the background of the convicted murderer is one thing. Calling for the abolition of the death penalty is another. That the Pope has done so exemplifies how humanistic liberalism has taken over the Catholic Church. The death penalty has always been understood to be a foundation of civil order. That the Pope calls the death penalty part of of the contemporary “culture of death” shows an utter loss of any intellectual foundation.

What we have here is, as Matt would say, one aspect of liberalism attacking another. The modern culture of death is liberalism unleashed, the denial that there is anything higher than the human person and his feelings. And the Pope, accepting the same premises, i.e., that the human person and his feelings is all, says that it is therefore wrong for the state to take the life of any person.

If traditionalism means anything, it means that there is a higher authority than the individual person. In political terms, this means that the state, in the interest of perserving civil order and protecting society, has the right to punish criminals, and specifically to executive murderers. Modern liberals oppose the death penalty because they reject the idea that there can be any authority higher than the individual person. They see capital punishment as an expression of unconstrained violence and oppression. That the Pope also sees capital punishment as an expression of unconstrained violence, rather than as the legitimate social means of constraining violence, shows an utter loss of traditional, conservative, or Christian understanding. The man is a liberal.

I am generally not all that enthusiastic about the death penalty, although I am only concerned about the danger of executing an innocent person. But I find a criminal’s background of at best limited relevance to determining sentence. The procedures outlined by Mr. Alvarez seem to me to be a vast waste of time and effort and a classic case of showing more concern for the criminal than the victim. As for the death penalty being part of the “culture of violence”: societies with death penalties inflicted without much soul-searching have sometimes had very low overall violence. England, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is a good example. If we want to reduce violence, I can think of better places to start than by sobbing over murderers.

As a Jew, my views on the death penalty differ from the Pope’s. Euthanasia and abortion are both examples of the destruction of innocent human life. The death penalty, on the other hand, is the removal of an utterly evil and extremely dangerous person from society. Furthermore, I distinguish between violence in general and necessary violence.

Mr. Alvarez,

You say that “The death penalty will not overcome violent crime any more than abortion will end the problem of unwanted pregnancy or euthanasia will solve the problems of aging and illness.” The death penalty as it is currently practiced will not overcome violent crime. But if the death penalty is made mandatory for certain types of crime(rape, terrorism, child molestation, kidnapping, sale of large amounts of drugs) and the criminal is executed within the first five years after sentencing, it will certainly be an extremely effective deterrent.

I would like to thank Mr. Auster, Mr. Levine and Mr. Girin for their wise comments. I do not want to be misunderstood. I mentioned the Pope’s position on the issue of capital punishment to make the point that it is a morally complex issue and even men of high moral integrity and conservative sensibilities have differences of opinion. Justice Scalia has publically rejected the Pope’s position. What I hope to discourage is the simplistic notion that executing a lot of murderers will somehow improve the state of contemporary society. The problems of violence and criminality have deep cultural and spiritual roots. The criminal justice system can only clear the refuse after the fact, but has, in my opinion, a nominal impact on the level of violent crime.

Mr. Alvarez wrote:
“The criminal justice system can only clear the refuse after the fact, but has, in my opinion, a nominal impact on the level of violent crime.”

That aligns pretty well with the traditional Christian view as I understand it. Specifically, the main moral purpose of the death penalty is _retribution_: to pay in justice for the crime that was committed, to balance the scales of justice. A secondary moral justification is to protect society from the actual criminal executed.

Deterrence has always been at the bottom of the list, if it was on the list at all. I’m no DP expert but I’ve seen rhetoric at times claiming that the DP is not a very effective deterrent. If so then sociologists may be starting to catch up to what the natural law has told us for millennia.

I agree that justice, not deterrence, is the decisive reason for the death penalty. Very simply, a person who has committed deliberate brutal murder without mitigating factors should not go on living in this world. If he does, the order of society is thrown askew. His victim is dead, and he’s alive. A society that allows such an injustice to occur has lost its moral soul. Europe has utterly lost its soul. America has not completely lost its.

It’s amazing to me that liberals constantly talk about “justice,” but they don’t think it’s unjust for brutal murderers to be allowed to live. That is the worst injustice.

I agree with Mr. Auster. Justice should be the primary reason for the death penalty. Mosaic law’s justification of capital punishment is built around justice.

Also, the current death penalty procedures in this country should be changed. It’s simply insane that murderous scum like Mumia Abu Jamal is kept on death row for over two decades. No death row inmate should be held there for more than five years. The current system is a mockery of justice.

The Japanese death penalty procedures are much better. The inmate is held on death row for at most three years, he’s totally isolated from the rest of the world, and he’s not notified of when his execution will be until the guards knock on his door and drag him off. The executed criminal is then buried in an unmarked grave and his relatives get a short notice of his execution.

Liberals not only advance the destruction of justice by their endless machinations to abolish the death penalty, they compound injustice in a case like that of Mumia Abu Jamal, the radio star of NPR at one point (until they were embarassed enough to quit broadcasting his rants).

Officer Faulkner’s family is forced by state law to pay taxes that go to provide food and shelter for the killer of their husband/father - a burden that has continued for 20-plus years now. Worse, Jamal and his legal team have arranged things so the considerable financial assets generated by his cause celebre (books, interviews, etc.) are immune to civil suits brought by Faulkner’s family. (I found this out from an email reply from Faulkner’s son after recommnending that they file a civil suit to keep Jamal and his degenerate leftist attorney’s from profiting from Faulkner’s murder. The Jamal case is truly an outrage.

What is the current status of Abu Jamal’s case? Were all appeals rejected? Was an execution date set?

Mr. Girin asked: “What is the current status of Abu Jamal’s case?”

It’s complicated. The last set execution date was in December of 1999. The defense won a stay and then a reversal of the death sentence — though not the conviction — in Federal District Court in December of 2001.

The state of Pennsylvania appealed but the 3rd Circuit Court sat on the appeal until the Supreme Court handed down a decision in a similar case. That happened in June of 2004 and the state’s appeal is now back on track.

If the state wins, the original death sentence is upheld and an execution date can be set. If Mumia wins, and his record in the 3rd Circuit is pretty good, the penalty phase of the original trial will be redone from scratch.

In October, the defense asked for but didn’t get a delay. On the other hand, they have appeals of their own on both the state and federal tracks.

Short answer: Mumia won’t be leaving death row one way or the other for years.

Too bad that Mumia is able to draw it out. I repeat, the death penalty is a great and indispensable thing, both for justice’s sake and the mental health of society. There are certain people who simply should not be in this world. When Timothy McVay was executed, I had this feeling, “Yesterday that monster was still in the world, and now he’s gone from the world, and the world is a better place for it.” There is a cleanness and finality about the death penalty which is very salutary. It tells us that, in this imperfect human society, there is a justice above us, and human society is able, at least on occasion, to act in accordance with it.

I say it again, the failure to execute murderers demoralizes and delegitimizes society.

J. Miller Leavy, the legendary LA prosecutor (Caryl Chessman, Barbara Graham, L. Ewing Scott), had a comment on this subject:

“The people I prosecuted deserved to die, Leavy told The Times in 1990. “I didn’t prosecute to deter. I prosecuted to punish. Barbara Graham tied Mabel Monahan’s hands behind her back, pistol-whipped her and left her to die. Sending her (Miss Graham) to the gas chamber didn’t bother me at all.”

The above is from Leavy’s obituary in the LA Times on 1-5-1995. The Barbara Graham case was made into a movie in 1958, I Want To Live!-starring Susan Hayward. The movie is VERY inaccurate. It makes her out to be innocent with the prosecution convicting her by trickery. In fact, the evidence was overwhelming. See an excellent account of this case at crimelibrary.com.

The movie plays often on TCM, Hayward got Best Actress. It has always been a favorite of death penalty opponents as it shows a presumably sympathetic victim being killed in the gas chamber.

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I found the movie “In Cold Blood” a very strong argument for the death penalty. In that movie, one of the two killers was not entirely evil, he sort of followed along behind his partner rather than initiating the acts himself, and you developed a human sympathy for him during his trial. But in the end he is hung, and the scene of his hanging, the absoluteness of it, was very impressive. The lesson it conveyed to me was: even though this young man had sympathetic human qualities and was not all evil, he had done this very evil thing, and the only just punishment for him was death. In other words, there is something higher than our human sympathies.

But for contemporary people, there is nothing higher than human sympathies and desires, and therefore the death penalty strikes them as a monstrously oppressive act rather than as justice.

Mr. Auster stated: “But for contemporary people, there is nothing higher than human sympathies and desires, and therefore the death penalty strikes them as a monstrously oppressive act rather than as justice.”

That’s a tremendous indictment of liberalism. This is one of the reasons why VFR is such an important voice crying in ths wilderness in which we find ourselves. Where else could one find such a concise description of the disease that is eating our civilization from within?

Mr. Auster makes a very compelling point. The reference to “in Cold Blood” underscores the fact that in the contemporary world the reality of Justice (as is also the case with Honor and Courage) has been denigrated to a matter of false liberal sentimentality.

“The Japanese death penalty procedures are much better. The inmate is held on death row for at most three years, he’s totally isolated from the rest of the world, and he’s not notified of when his execution will be until the guards knock on his door and drag him off.”

It would be appalling if such procedures were instituted in this country. C.S. Lewis used to counter the arguments against capital punishment by asking whether a murderer was more likely to repent before dying of old age in a prison hospital at the end of a term of life imprisonment or before dying on the gallows. He implied that the well-known mind-concentrating effect of an imminent execution would make repentance much more likely before execution. But while the knowledge that a man is to hanged in a fortnight concentrates the mind remarkably, the sudden revelation that he is to be hanged in five minutes is more likely simply to disorient and confuse his mind, and make repentance *less* likely. For any Christian, that must be a bad result.

I agree with Seamus. I had never heard of the Japanese manner of execution before, but if this is true, it is horrifying. It denies the prisoner the opportunity to prepare for his death.

I am far from certain that the death penalty is not a deterrent, although I claim no expert knowledge of this issue. I believe there are studies showing that it does deter some “calculated” crimes. On the anecdotal level, the famous psychiatrist Frederic Wertham, who had worked with criminals for many years in the NY justice system, flatly said that in his experience it did act as a deterrent. By the way, Dr. Wertham was a leftist who opposed the death penalty, though he ridiculed people who made a fetish of opposing it as the key to reducing violence in society!

Everything I’ve read indicates it has a deterrent effect. But, in my view, that is not the decisive reason for it. Justice is.

I think justice and expressing society’s outrage at the act are sufficient grounds for capital punishment.

Mr. Girin wrote: “The Japanese death penalty procedures are much better. The inmate is held on death row for at most three years, he’s totally isolated from the rest of the world, and he’s not notified of when his execution will be until the guards knock on his door and drag him off.”

The Afghan procedures are much the same. The prisoner is only told, “Pack up your stuff, you’re going home.” It’s not even *necessarily* a lie. Murder is considered a crime against the victim’s family, not against the state. The victim’s family has the right to an execution, but they also have an absolute right to grant clemency, even at the last minute.

That’s one victim’s right that doesn’t exist here. If the victim’s family wants the execution, they can be heard in court during the Victim Impact Statement. If they don’t, they can’t.

More to the point, if an Afghan family wants an execution, they have to provide someone to pull the trigger. The state will do it if they can’t, but not if they won’t.

I respectfully disagree with Seamus and Mr. Auster and I think the disagreement stems from the different ways in which Christianity and Judaism view the death penalty.

I don’t think a prisoner on death row is entitled to have time in order to prepare for his death. And frankly, I don’t care if he repents or not, as long as he’s permanently removed from society, I’m happy. No amount of repentance is enough to atone for a capital crime. Also, in a way it is more cruel when the prisoner knows when his execution will be and is counting down the days. If he’s just led to the gallows one day without advance knowledge, it might spare him the agony of the months leading to execution.

While the Japanese death penalty procedures are cruel by Western standards, I’d rather have the prisoner experience tremendous fear and suffering for a few minutes before execution (I think it’s just punishment for the pain and suffering he inflicted on the victim(s) and their family) than let him sit in his cell for many years, eat pizza, watch TV, and even host radio shows.

“I don’t think a prisoner on death row is entitled to have time in order to prepare for his death. And frankly, I don’t care if he repents or not, as long as he’s permanently removed from society, I’m happy.”

If this world is the only one there is, then Mr. Girin’s view might be valid. But if there is a future world of permanent rewards and punishments, it is wrong to wish for the damnation of one who, given the opportunity, might repent. God, after all, desires not the death [i.e., permanent, spiritual death] of a sinner, but that he turn from his wickedness and live.

“I don’t think a prisoner on death row is entitled to have time in order to prepare for his death.”

No, not any more than any of us is “entitled” to sanctifying grace. It is entirely undeserved. That’s why it’s called “grace.” But to deliberately shut off another person’s opportunity to receive grace, when it would cost society little to afford that opportunity, would be horrifying.

Is Mr. Girin suggesting that Judaism would countenance the sudden imposition of death, without giving the prisoner time to prepare?

In any case, the idea of giving a man a chance to ready himself would certainly seem to be based in a Christian ethos. It expresses the idea that even though the man’s physical life must be taken away, we are not denying his soul, his humanity. And part of that recognition of his humanity is letting him prepare for his death.

In executing a man, the state is taking his life, not his soul. It is denying him the ability to go on living in this world, it is not denying his humanity.

To do the latter is barbarism.

I’m simply suggesting that in Judaism, this life and actions in this life are much more important than the afterlife and the imposition of justice in the form of execution is more important than the soul of a sinner or his “humanity”. According to the Jewish tradition, the souls of utterly evil individuals are destroyed after death in the Gehenna and since people who commit capital crimes are precisely those individuals, the state of their souls is not important to me. Also, many Talmudic scholars have written about “korois”, the death of the soul of evildoers, which leads me to the conclusion that certain individuals just don’t have souls. I’m not trying to offend my Christian friends or seem cruel and heartless, I’m just being honest and stating what I believe based on the teachings of my religion (I don’t consider myself an expert on Jewish theology and may be wrong in my interpretation).

Since justice and righteousness are more important in Judaism than forgiveness (at least based on my perception), the sudden imposition of death doesn’t seem cruel to me. After all that’s what the greatest Jews like Moses (when he killed the Egyptian who was beating an Israelite slave) and Joshua (when he slew idolaters and Canaanites)did.

Once again, I respectfully disagree with Mr. Auster and still believe this type of disagreement is inevitable between people who practice different religions. In our case we practice different religions but have the same ethnicity :-). The most important thing in this discussion is that we both agree on the importance and necessity of capital punishment.

The idea of not giving a man a chance to get right with his god is barbaric and repugnant.

Also, the fact that we hide executions from the public is equally repugnant. If we as a nation can’t look at what our government is doing, then the government probably shouldn’t be doing it. I say this as someone who favors capital punishment.

Since Mr. Girin has stated the issue between as as one of irreducible religious differences, I won’t say anything further about it, except to say that I find his comments very interesting and enlightening.

“According to the Jewish tradition, the souls of utterly evil individuals are destroyed after death in the Gehenna and since people who commit capital crimes are precisely those individuals, the state of their souls is not important to me.”
Well, then, I suppose Moses’ and David’s were quickly disintegrated, since they both committed capital crimes according to the Bible.

Mr. Copold wrote: “Also, the fact that we hide executions from the public is equally repugnant. If we as a nation can’t look at what our government is doing, then the government probably shouldn’t be doing it. I say this as someone who favors capital punishment.”

I agree as someone who opposes it. If we are going to do it, and if we say we’re doing it at least in part for its deterrent value, then why are we doing everything humanly possible to minimize that deterrent value?

“they both committed capital crimes according to the Bible”

Huh? I understand that David can reasonably be called a murderer for what he did to Uriah the Hittite, but how could Moses be guilty? Surely the killing of the Egyptian was justified as coming to the defense of another.

Of course, David repented of his sin and, we are led to understand, was forgiven. Why would Mr. Girin think it a good thing to deny the same opportunity to other murderers? He says that “[a]ccording to the Jewish tradition, the souls of utterly evil individuals are destroyed after death in the Gehenna.” But the whole point of allowing repentence is so that the person can cease to be utterly evil. I should think that would be a good thing.

Moses is referred to as a murderer for that crime. Logically, to stop the beating a Hebrew, Moses, as the adopted son of royalty, could have simply issued an order.

I find Mr. Copold’s comparison of Moses and King David to capital criminals disgusting and offensive. What Moses and David did were not capital crimes because Moses killed an enemy of his people who was killing a fellow Jew and David did not directly kill Uriah so to state that his action was a capital crime is offensive and ridiculous!

I didn’t say all murderers’ souls are destroyed, but the souls of “utterly evil individuals”. If Mr. Copold considers Moses and David to be utterly evil individuals, then I will consider him an anti-Semite. A disagreement with someone does not mean that you can insult the holy men of his faith!

“Moses could’ve issued an order’? By the time the order would be carried out, the Egyptian would’ve beat the Jew to death!

“…David did not directly kill Uriah so to state that his action was a capital crime is offensive and ridiculous”
Are you really going to stand by that bit of sophistry? I could say the same for a lot of dictators in history, including Stalin and Hitler.

My point was not that Moses and David were utterly evil individuals. My point is that it’s wiser to leave such judgements to the big guy in the sky. With rare exception (i.e., Hitler, Stalin, etc.) you simply do not have the competence to declare people “utterly evil.” If you paid a little attention to Job and other similar works, you’d understand that.

Indeed, our system convicts people who are guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” not people who are guilty “with metaphysical certitude.” Given that standard, you’d be wise not to repeat Hamlet’s error and allow a condemned man to get himself right with Jesus (or whomever else he prays to).

Thanks to all for this ecxcellent discussion. The difference between justice and deterrence as purposes of the death penalty is significant. I would say that in the jurisprudence that predominates in our law schools and legal institutions, deterrence has replaced justice as the basis for all punishment, not only the death penalty. The consequences of this are dire.

The concept of justice as a divinely sanctioned order, which in the case of murder requires the death penalty, is vanishing from our law. As pointed out above, it is a casualty of liberalism. Under the traditional order, premeditated murder required the death penalty. Now, however, the crime must be sufficiently heinous (read lurid) to shock a given jury out of the liberal default position that nothing justifies the death penalty. The elasticity of the heinousness standard is obvious. While there is a fairly clear line between life and death, and a fairly clear line between premeditated and accidental, there is no clear line between heinous and not-heinous. There is something pornographic about the situation; the jury has to be excited into imposing the ultimate penalty by other considerations besides whether the defendant purposefully killed a fellow human being. The imaginary quality of the penalty, which may not be imposed at all, and not before the defendant has lived for many years, further supports the pornographic aspect of the death penalty as currently administered. The concept of justice, formerly a gift of an awful and loving God, has thus been reduced to a fantasy that the jury is only permitted to approach in a state of emotional turmoil following a drama involving not only the horrific details of a “heinous” crime but, as Mr. Alvarez points out, the entire life of the defendant. (Cf. Nagisa Oshima’s Death By Hanging, in which the Japanese prison guards act out scenes from the Korean defendant’s life to remind him who he is, following an unsucessful hanging resulting in amnesia.)

Because the concept of justice has dissolved, the utilitarian concept of deterrence has become the only recognized, legitimate, agreed-upon purpose of any punishment. But deterrence is fundamentally unjust. It involves using a human being as a thing, a human billboard, to send a message to society. That is wrong, and though you could argue that a criminal forfeits his right not to be so used, I think it is basic to Judeo-Christian civilization to regard someone as a human being even in putting him to death. (This feature of deterrence is also consistent with viewing current death penalty proceedings as pornographic. Pornography also uses people as things.) Further, deterrence provides no measure by which to calibrate the severity of the punishment. If the lawmaker felt that jaywalking had to be punished by death in oder to prevent it, death would be imposed. Only justice supports the sense of proportionality. Deterrence does not. The fact that deterrence is the only officially recognized justification for punishment, but is still widely believed not to have any recognizable effect (beyond indisputably “specifically deterring” the defendant during the times he is incarcerated or dead) also points to the bankruptcy of the current liberal order in criminal law. Deterrence may be nonsensical, but at least it’s not divinely sanctioned.

For me, the best movie about the death penalty was Dead Man Walking. It showed how the imminence of death could even turn a degraded, hardened, inhuman killer into a human being who could grasp the nature of his crime and repent. In the traditional Christian view, those hours of repented life are worth eternity. It is only in the materialist view that decades of sullen, stolid, violent unrepentance under life imprisonment constitute “more life” than an hour of repentance. If you can’t have repentance without the death penalty, here is another justification, or another aspect to the justification of justice—the vision of divine justice provided by the penalty can lead a killer to God.

This can only happen, however, where the institutions permit Christian doctrine to do its work. Whether in our corrupt society the death penalty can be used to exact justice and follow divine law is an open question. Getting rid of the heinousness standard, however, would be a step in the right direction.

I strenuously disagree with Mr. Girin about providing the convicted criminal with the oppportunity to repent, though in the Christian tradition, Dante did show at least one damned soul whose body was still walking around on earth. I.e., in Dante’s view the Christian God also thought that some were beyond repentance. Human beings, though, are not allowed to make that call.

“David did not directly kill Uriah so to state that his action was a capital crime is offensive and ridiculous”

I strongly suspect the prophet Nathan would disagree—indeed, did disagree.

David’s situation was far more complicated than that. I suspect the reason that G-d didn’t kill him was because David’s past righteous deeds (piety, humbleness, killing Goliath, putting his life on the line for his people, defeating the Jews’ enemies, laying a groundwork for a strong and united Jewish state, etc.) outweighed his murder of Uriah. That is why I found Mr. Copold’s comparison of King David, a great leader even by secular standards to an outlaw on death row. And he accuses me of sophistry…

Mr. Copold,
When I said that “David did not directly kill Uriah” I meant that wishing someone’s death and putting him in a position to die is undoubtedly horrible and immoral but it is vastly different and much less evil than actually killing him. I’m not saying that what David did wasn’t evil, it definitely was an evil and heinous act, but based on Mosaic law, his act did not merit capital punishment. What G-d did was to curse David through the Prophet Nathan.

The sentence “That is why I found Mr. Copold’s comparison of King David, a great leader even by secular standards to an outlaw on death row.” should read “That is why I found Mr. Copold’s comparison of King David, a great leader even by secular standards, to an outlaw on death row extremely offensive.”
My apologies for the sloppy typing.

Thanks to Bill for his superbly insightful statement of the issue. In his treatment, the current criterion for capital punishment—heinousness rather than objective criminality—emerges as the quintessential unprincipled exception, an epitome of the moral confusions of our age.

I agree that Dead Man Walking was very good, but I disagree that the Sean Penn character repented of his crime. What he did was to _confess_ his crime, which he had adamantly refused to do up to that point, and it was unquestionable the imminence of death that finally shook him from his denial of the truth. That is no small thing, but the fact remains that he did not repent of his crime.

I’d also like to point out that while mentally normal (i.e., non-liberal) people saw this movie as a powerful argument for the death penalty, liberals saw it as the opposite. Thus the scene in which the murderer’s execution by lethal injection alternates with the flashback to his horrible murder of the two young people was seen by liberals, unbelievably, as saying that the execution was the _moral equivalent_ of the murders! Of course the truth was the opposite of that. The execution by lethal injection, a quiet, peaceful death, with the nun gazing lovingly into his eyes as he dies, could not have been more different from the terrifying death he imposed on those two young people. Liberals’ conscience—their ability to _feel_ right and wrong—is twisted by their liberalism and so they are unable to see this.

I give Tim Robbins, who elsewhere in his career has been a dogmatic and nasty liberal, a lot of credit for making this movie. I can only guess that this was one of those instances in which the underlying power of the material forced an ideologically motivated artist, against his own inclinations, to express the truth.

Mr. Copold’s reply to Mr. Girin’s charge strikes me as evasive and sophistic. Mr. Copold’s readiness to include Moses and David, the two leading figures of ancient Israel, among the class of “utterly evil individuals” conveys an ugliness of mind and an underlying belligerence which he has displayed in a variety of contexts. He is an intelligent person and has interesting things to offer to our discussions. But he keeps just skirting the edge of getting excluded from this site.

For Aquinas, the state’s right to kill a convicted murderer is legitimate for two reasons: (1) because he is a threat to the welfare of the community, and (2) because in killing the person falls from human dignity into the slavery of beasts and thus may be treated according to what is useful to the community. The human dignity of the person is inalienable and thus despite the nature of the crime committed, the state does not have the legitimate authority to deprive the individual of his inherent dignity and may only execute him for the safety of the community. Since liberalism did not exist in the thirteenth century, it seems that the Church’s position on limiting capital punishment only to cases where the welfare of society cannot otherwise be secured is not of recent, leftist origin. See E. Christian Brugger, “Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition” (Southbend, Ind.: Univ. Notre Dame Press, 2004).

In conformity with the teaching of Aquinas, here is what the Catechism states regarding the death penalty:

“Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”

————————————————————————————————————————

“That is why I found Mr. Copold’s comparison of King David, a great leader even by secular standards, to an outlaw on death row extremely offensive.”

And yet this same King David, when presented with the fact of his own case, said “the man that has done this thing shall surely die.” It would seem that David thought that the facts justified characterizing his own actions as “a capital crime.” He was spared the death penalty, in light of his repentance and the good deeds he had done, but that doesn’t alter the fact that his crime was one that, of its nature, merited death.

Moreover, since Nathan told David, “thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon,” I don’t think he would have shrunk from calling it sophistry if David had attempted to defend himself by saying that he hadn’t killed Uriah directly.

Seamus like Mr. Copold is engaging in evasion and sophistry. Instead of addressing my accusation that it is offensive and inappropriate to compare King David to a death row inmate, he comes up with irrelevant examples. What David himself said and thought in this situation is irrelevant to our discussion because we are analyzing and judging his actions not his feelings.

Furthermore, Seamus obviously didn’t read the second part of my last posting. It states:
“When I said that “David did not directly kill Uriah” I meant that wishing someone’s death and putting him in a position to die is undoubtedly horrible and immoral but it is vastly different and much less evil than actually killing him. I’m not saying that what David did wasn’t evil, it definitely was an evil and heinous act, but based on Mosaic law, his act did not merit capital punishment…”

Wishing someone’s death and conspiring to murder a person did not merit the death penalty in Mosaic law.

“Mr. Copold’s readiness to include Moses and David, the two leading figures of ancient Israel, among the class of ‘utterly evil individuals’ conveys an ugliness of mind and an underlying belligerence which he has displayed in a variety of contexts.”

But Mr. Copold specifically *denied* that he placed Moses and David among the class of “utterly evil individuals” (see his post of 6:06 pm). He said that they were guilty of capital crimes (i.e., murder), which is quite a different thing. (Mind you, I disagree with him in the case of Moses, for the reason stated by Mr. Girin at 5:52 pm.) I note that Mr. Girin (at 5:09 pm) claimed that those who commit capital crimes are, in fact “utterly evil individuals,” but that simply isn’t the case. Mr. Copold was attempting to draw the distinction which Mr. Girin was denying, and arguing that people who commit capital crimes can in fact nonetheless be redeemable.

When I stated that people who commit capital crimes are “utterly evil individuals”, I was referring to our current capital punishment situation and to people like Mumia Abu Jamal and other death row inmates in this country. Mr. Copold used this statement to insult my religion by making offensive comparisons and characterizations of Moses and King David.

Mr. Alvarez reminds me that prevention, or as it is termed “incapacitation,” is also a recognized justification for punishment in our time. That is problematic for other reasons. Indeed it is not punishment at all but an expression of the community’s right to defend itself. Thus, it involves a completely different societal interest from the interest in punishing a past act. The past act is only meaningful as an indication of a future threat, not as a disorder in the cosmos that must be corrected, or an outrage on God’s law that must be avenged. Prevention also bears no necessary relationship to the severity of the crime, since it can involve life imprisonment for any conduct deemed dangerous enough to require prevention. It is just to protect society, and probably just to imprison for life an incorrigible sex offender (though the death penalty also may be appropriate for such persons), but it is unjust not to require a person to pay for his past crimes. Socrates imposes that duty on society for its own good and for the good of the offender’s soul.

I yield to Mr. Alvarez’ statement that Catholic teaching is what it is, but I don’t see how to square it with the covenant between God and Noah (that “whoso sheddeth the blood of man, by man will his blood be shed”) or with the Law delivered by Moses (and generally confirmed by Jesus Christ), according to which death is the just reward for deliberate murder. I note also that there is no mention of justice in either the passage from Aquinas or the Catechism, though apparently justice is conceived of as leaving to God as often as possible the decision as to when a man must die. To me, that is rational and virtuous, but it is not the Law.

Although I have said that I am not all that enthusiastic about the death penalty, I have a modest proposal I would like to offer. To avert the danger of executing an innocent person, we should make it an inflexible rule never to execute anyone for a single crime, no matter how horrible that crime is. Obviously, this aspect of things is tough to stomach.
BUT — we should institute a policy, almost as inflexible, that any adult who has committed a SECOND violent felony should be executed, even if neither crime consists of what would usually be considered a capital offense. My reasoning is that the evidence is that adult second offenders are practically never rehabilitated; they will just go on committing crimes until they are stopped, while it is most unlikely that a person will be convicted unjustly, twice. It seems to me that this combination of policies would turn capital punishment from a catch as catch can proposition which may conceivably strike down the innocent into a real tool for the annihilation of the criminal class.

I agree with Mr. Levine’s proposal. It will both promote justice and act as a deterrent.