The Slow Death of Capital Punishment

From a historical point of view, lethal punishment is linked to national history. Up until the 20th century, European culture supported the death penalty. Before the gradual banning of this extreme punishment, the noose, guillotine and executioner’s axe were held in high esteem. From the point of view of Western civilization, the Old Continent remains the lynchpin of the abolitionist movement. Since its restoration in 1976 by the United States, capital punishment has been a catalyst for discord between Europe and America.

In reaction to the horrors of Nazism and Stalinist bloodshed, European nations have gradually banned every form of execution. In the United States, capital punishment remains an expedient form of correctional justice. Perceived as a means of effectively deflecting serious criminality, the ultimate punishment is also intended to reestablish social equilibrium: The lost life is compensated for when the murderer’s life is taken. What’s more, in America’s Deep South, the extermination of a damned soul purifies society.

The killing of the guilty symbolizes the destruction of evil. This morbid ritual essentially feeds on deterrence and vengeance. Defenders of capital punishment have lost the battle of intimidation. Many studies show the argument to be empty. For example, two neighboring states in the U.S., one against the death penalty and one in favor of it, have similar homicide statistics.

Defending the Indefensible

Lex talonis (“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”) compels the defense of the indefensible. The cruelty of the child rapist, atrocity of the serial killer or barbarity of the terrorist in no way justifies a democratic society abandoning its fundamental values. While a human being can choose to renounce life, the state cannot morally impose or suggest this renouncement.

Strangely, when it comes to abortion, the American right, religious and puritan, makes the right to life of a fetus sacred. In the same breath, these good people invoke the state’s superior right to slay murderers. Could it be that the innocence of the fetus gives it the right to live, while the guilt of the killer, affirmed (with risk of error) by a court, deprives them of that right? The state cannot legitimately take what it can’t give: the right to life.

A Political Affair

In the United States, particularly in individual states, the death penalty is treated like an issue of local politics. 34 states (and the federal government) practice the death penalty. Over the entire country, executions are most frequent in the southern, Protestant states. This practice feeds on racial injustice. African-Americans make up 12 percent of the American population and represent 41 percent of those given the death penalty.

Contrary to the situation at the federal level, the prosecutors and judges at the state level are elected. Before an electorate that is primarily in favor of capital punishment, this delicate question remains a local political game.

Leaving aside the ethical debate, American abolitionists are relying above all on a factual argument: The current dysfunction in the judicial system permits the condemnation of innocents. For these past few years (with the help of DNA tests), several victims of judicial errors have escaped death row.

In June 2002, the United States Supreme Court stoked the abolitionist fire by prohibiting the execution of mentally handicapped defendants. A second judgement required juries, rather than the trial judge, to examine the relevant facts that might justify capital punishment.

Lastly, economic motivations favor the abolition or reduction of death penalty sentences. In California, death row has become a money pit. A recent study sounds the alarm and appeals to voters. Whatever the political motivation, it is the result that counts. So goes the slow death of capital punishment.