The Death Penalty Has Two Faces

A few days ago in Virginia, Teresa Lewis was killed by lethal injection, and no one went to prison because this woman was legitimately condemned to death. She had tried to kill her husband and her adoptive son, and she had done it without permission. Meanwhile, those who killed Mrs. Lewis did it with the consent of the authorities. The fifth commandment should therefore be rewritten to say “Thou shall not kill without permission.” For centuries we have blessed the flags of soldiers who, when sent to war, had a license to kill like James Bond.

Now it seems that Ahmadinejad, who is about to stone a woman (if he hasn’t already done it by the time you read this), has reacted to the appeals from the West, saying: “You all lament because we want to legally kill an Iranian woman while you legally kill an American woman?”

Naturally, people objected that the American woman sought to kill her husband while the Iranian had only committed adultery. And the American was killed in a painless way while the Iranian will be killed in an extremely painful manner. However, a reply of that nature insinuates two things: one, that it is justified to kill a criminal, while for adultery, a legal separation without alimony is punishment enough; and two, that one can kill according to law, provided that it is done so in the most painless way possible.

Instead what one should be arguing, if our thoughts were not troubled, is that one should not kill anyone, not even a criminal, and one should not kill by law even if the execution is nearly painless, even if one were to inject a drug that provided a delicious high. How should we react if countries less democratic than ours ask us to not concern ourselves with their death penalties given that we have death penalties of our own?

The situation is extremely embarrassing and I would like to know if the number of Westerners who protested against the Iranian death penalty, among whom we even have the First Lady of France, also protested against the American death penalty. I would guess not, because those condemned to death in the United States, not to mention in China, are plentiful and we have become complacent, while it is natural that the idea of a woman massacred by thrown stones has more of an effect.

I am aware that when they asked me to sign a petition to prevent the stoning of the Iranian woman I did it immediately, but, in the meantime, I forgot that they were also killing a Virginian woman. Would we have protested with equal fervor if the Iranian woman had been condemned to die by a peaceful lethal injection? Do we become indignant over stoning or over death inflicted on those that have not violated the fifth, rather only the sixth commandment? I don’t know; our reactions are often instinctive and irrational.

In August a site appeared on the Internet that taught different ways to cook a cat. Whether it was in jest or serious, all the animal rights groups throughout the world were outraged. I am a particular fan of cats (one of the few living beings that doesn’t permit itself to be exploited by its owner but instead exploits its owner with an Olympic cynicism, and whose affection for the house prefigures a form of patriotism) and therefore I would recoil with horror from a cat stew. However, I find the rabbit equally gracious, even if it is perhaps less intelligent, and yet I eat it without reservation.

I am scandalized when I see Chinese houses where dogs roam freely, perhaps while playing with children, and everyone knows that they will be eaten by the end of the year. But in our farms they avoid the pigs that they tell me are extremely intelligent animals, and no one worries that they must be reborn as prosciutto. What is it that induces us to judge which animals are inedible, which animals are protected by their almost anthropomorphic characteristics, and which animals are extremely edible, such as the milk calves and the lamb that even in flesh inspire so much tenderness?

We ourselves are truly very strange animals, capable of great love and frightening cynicism, ready to simultaneously protect a little red fish and boil a live lobster, to crush a millipede with remorse, but also to judge a barbaric killing of a butterfly. In this manner we use two weights and two means of measurement for two death penalties; or, rather, we are scandalized by one while we pretend to know nothing of the other. At certain times one is tempted to give reason to Cioran,* and to believe that creation, having escaped the hands of God, is dependent on a clumsy and bungling demiurge, perhaps a little drunk, that put himself to work with very confused ideas.

*Editor’s Note: Emil Cioran, Romanian essayist and philosopher