Death Penalty

For the sake of historical perspective, it should be noted that until the nineteenth century, when anesthetics were invented, pain was far more common, and more commonly inflicted and accepted than it is today. Even surgical operations had to take place without anesthetics. Further, the notion of human solidarity was very restricted: The suffering of any one person was not much felt by others - religious rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding - and it was socially quite acceptable to be amused by their pain. Death at an early age was common. Life expectancy was short, and infectious diseases were ever present, whereas today the degenerative diseases of old age are the major threat to life. Since it happens to all of us, death was not regarded as much of a punishment. The mere shortening of the life-span was thought insufficient to deter or punish crimes.

In the last two centuries capital punishment - originally beheading, from the Latin caput (head) or capitis (of the head) - has become the ultimate penalty. Few now think that death is not harsh enough, or that the threat of it is insufficient. Many indeed think that death is too much of a punishment for any crime. Is it? To answer this question we will have to consider the purpose of punishment in general and ask whether the death penalty is useful, or needed, to achieve it, and whether, apart from usefulness, it can be morally justified, whether it can be just.

1. Once a person has been sentenced to death, waiting for execution is likely to be psychologically painful. We all live both in the present and at least partly in the future. Expectations of the future play a major role in our present happiness or unhappiness. Obviously a condemned person has little to look forward to. Waiting for the end, while in prison, is hardly a happy experience. Therefore, there should be as little waiting as possible. Yet at present, the period of waiting and uncertainty is usually very long - up to ten years in some cases until all appeals are exhausted. Of the civilized countries that have retained the death penalty, the United States is the only one that permits or even insists on these long and profitless delays. Although the death penalty is constitutional if imposed by due process, well-meaning judges do, in effect, sabotage it by permitting and inviting infinite appeals and delays. The result is that in 1982 there were about one thousand convicts on death row. Nobody knows how many of them will actually be executed and who will be spared, after expecting execution for years. Most convicts on death row are kept in conditions far worse than those imposed on other prisoners. They are isolated in minuscule cells, with nothing to do but wonder about their fate.

The cruelty is gratuitous. It is not inherent in the death penalty or in any way required by it. Rules and practices mandating a reduction and a speedup of appeals and making sure that persons under death sentence are treated no worse than other persons confined to prison are entirely compatible with the death penalty. Abolitionists and retentionists alike should favor the elimination of unnecessary cruelty. A person sentenced to death is not sentenced to any additional and gratuitous suffering.

2. Death should be inflicted as painlessly as possible. The punishment consists of being deprived of life at a date certain - not of suffering pain beyond this. At present, executions take place by means of electrocution, shooting, gassing, and lethal injections. It seems that shooting is painless (pain occurs only some time after a bullet hits and is not suffered by a person who dies on being hit). Injections, too, are painless. A condemned man ought to be allowed to choose, and methods of execution that may be painful, such as electrocution, or present an avoidable psychological burden, such as gassing, ought not to be used. If this were done, unnecessary cruelty (a redundant phrase since cruelty is by definition unnecessary pain) would be avoided. But death itself remains a terrifying thing for most of us.

3. Death is not so terrifying that some people do not volunteer for it. They may fast to death to foster a cause more important to them than their own lives. (Hunger strikers have been known to do so.) Or they may commit suicide because unhappy with life.

However, most people condemned to death, or guilty of crimes that may bring the death penalty, fear death. They do all they can to avoid execution. They assiduously try to avoid apprehension, conviction, and, finally, the death penalty. Only a very small minority - much less than one percent of the condemned - resign themselves to death, or welcome it. They refuse to appeal their sentences, greatly disappointing their lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union. The latter has argued that convicts should not have the right not to appeal their death sentences, a novel civil liberty.