Capital Punishment: For And Against Essay, Research Paper

Capital Punishment: For and Against

Thesis One: In principle a case can be made on moral grounds both supporting and

opposing capital punishment. Thesis two: Concretely and in practice, compelling

arguments against capital punishment can be made on the basis of its actual

administration in our society.

Two different cases can be made. One is based on justice and the nature of a

moral community. This leads to a defense of capital punishment. The second is

based on love and the nature of an ideal spiritual community. This leads to a

rejection of capital punishment. A central principle of a just society is that

every person has an equal right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness.” Within that framework, an argument for capital punishment can be

formulated along the following lines: some acts are so vile and so destructive

of community that they invalidate the right of the perpetrator to membership and

even to life. A community founded on moral principles has certain requirements.

The right to belong to a community is not unconditional. The privilege of living

and pursuing the good life in society is not absolute. It may be negated by

behavior that undermines the nature of a moral community. The essential basis on

which community is built requires each citizen to honor the rightful claims of

others. The utter and deliberate denial of life and opportunity to others

forfeits ones own claim to continued membership in the community, whose

standards have been so flagrantly violated. The preservation of moral community

demands that the shattering of the foundation of its existence must be taken

with utmost seriousness. The preciousness of life in a moral community must be

so highly honored that those who do not honor the life of others make null and

void their own right to membership. Those who violate the personhood of others,

especially if this is done persistently as a habit must pay the ultimate penalty.

This punishment must be inflicted for the sake of maintaining the community

whose foundation has been violated. We can debate whether some non-lethal

alternative is a fitting substitute for the death penalty. But the standard of

judgment is whether the punishment fits the crime and sufficiently honors the

nature of moral community.

LOVE AND AN IDEAL SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY

Christian love, is unconditional. It does not depend on the worthiness or merit

of those to whom it is directed. It is persistent in seeking the good of others

regardless of whether they return the favor or even deserve to be treated well

on the basis of their own incessant wrongdoing. An ideal community would be made

up of free and equal citizens devoted to a balance between individual self-

fulfillment and the advancement of the common good. Communal life would be based

on mutual love in which equality of giving and receiving was the norm of social

practice. Everyone would contribute to the best of ability and each would

receive in accordance with legitimate claims to available resources. What would

a community based on this kind of love do with those who committed brutal acts

of terror, violence, and murder? Put negatively, it would not live by the

philosophy of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life.”

It would act to safeguard the members of the community from further destruction.

Those who had shown no respect for life would be restrained, permanently if

necessary, so that they could not further endanger other members of the

community. But the purpose of confinement would not be vengeance or punishment.

Rather an ideal community would show mercy even to those who had shown no mercy.

It would return good for evil. The aim of isolation is reconciliation and not

revenge. never gives up. It is ever hopeful that even the worse among us can be

redeemed so that their own potential contribution to others can be realized.

Opportunities for confronting those who had been hurt most could be provided to

encourage remorse and reconciliation. If a life has been taken, no full

restitution can be made, of course, but some kind of service to the community

might be required as a way of partially making amends.

EVALUATION

Such, in brief, is the argument for and against capital punishment, one founded

on justice and the nature of moral community, the other resting on love and the

nature of an ideal spiritual community. If we stand back from this description

and make an attempt at evaluation, one point is crucial. The love ethic requires

a high degree of moral achievement and maturity. It is more suitable for small,

closely-knit communities in which members know each other personally and in some

depth. Forgiveness and reclamation flourish best in a setting in which people

can participate in each other’s lives. If you press the motif to its highest

manifestation, it becomes an ethic of non-resistance to evil, unqualified

pacifism, and self-sacrifice in which self-interest is totally abandoned. The

non-resisting Jesus on the cross who surrenders his life to save others is the

epitome of at this level. Love at this point becomes superethical. It is

grounded in a deep faith in God that surrenders any reference to earthly justice.

That is the reason for speaking of love and the nature of an ideal spiritual

community. Love of this kind abandons the right to kill another in self-defense

and will refuse absolutely to kill enemies even in a just war. If made into a

social ethic, it requires the poor to sacrifice for the rich, the sick to

sacrifice for the healthy, the oppressed to sacrifice for the oppressor. It

allows the neighbor to be terrorized, brutalized, and slaughtered, since

restraint of the aggressor is forbidden. All this is indefensible on moral

grounds. To make sense of this, it is helpful to distinguish between an

ethical dimension of love and an ecstatic dimension. Love as an ethical ideal

seeks a community based on mutuality and reciprocity in which there is an

equality of giving and receiving. Mutual love has a justice element in which

every person has an equal claim to fulfillment and an equal duty to be

responsible. Ethical love is unconditional and will reach out to others even

when they lack merit. But it will resist encroachment upon its own equal claim

to fulfillment and will repel if possible any denial of ones own right to be

fully human in every respect. Against the pacifist, ethical love would justify

killing in self-defense and killing enemies in a just war when non-lethal

alternatives are unavailable. They are necessary and tragic emergency means here

and now to stop present and ongoing violence. Capital punishment is opposed

since the crime has already been committed, and isolation can protect society

against future violence.

Love in the ecstatic dimension becomes superethical. In ecstasy one is

delirious with impetuous joy in the presence of the other and totally devoted to

that person’s happiness and well- being. In ecstasy we do not count the cost to

ourselves but are totally self-giving, heedless of our own needs. In this mood

sacrifice for the other is not an ethical act of self-denial but the

superethical expression of what we most want to do. Ecstasy involves the

unpremeditated overflow of boundless affection and the impulsive joy of

exhilarating union with the loved one. The ecstatic lover dances with delight in

the presence of the beloved. Sensible calculations balancing rights and duties

have no place. Rational ethics has been transcended by spiritual ecstasy.

Ecstatic love expresses itself spontaneously in a certain frame of spirit. Love

expressed in ecstasy gives all without regard to whether the recipient has any

claim on the gift. It is pure grace. Consider the story of the woman who poured

expensive perfume on the feet of Jesus (Mk. 14:3-9). She was displaying love in

the ecstatic dimension. Some present were thinking ethically. They complained

that this perfume could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor. On

ethical grounds they were right. What the woman did was indefensible as a moral

act. It was irrational and superethical. This deed flowed spontaneously from

ecstatic love. Love has both an ethical and an ecstatic or superethical

dimension, and we should not confuse the two. It is quite clear, however, that

ecstatic cannot be the norm of large, impersonal societies. A corporation cannot

exist on the basis of forgiving seventy times seven an incompetent employee

whose repeated ineptness is costing thousands of dollars. Ecstasy is not even

the mode in which we can live all the time in the most exemplary family life

with spouses and children. Ecstatic love is an occasional, fabulous, wonderful

overflowing of spectacular affection that adds immeasurably to the joy of life,

but it cannot be the day to day standard for ordinary life even in the family or

the church. Can Christian love in the ethical sense be an appropriate norm for

a large, secular, pluralistic, civil society? Can unconditional love for the

other that regards the welfare of the neighbor equal with ones own be the ideal

expected of the citizens of New York or the United States? Surely, to agree with

Reinhold Niebuhr, that would be to hope for an “impossible possibility.” Ethical

love is a description of ideal life in the family, in the church, and other

small communities in which unconditional regard for each other can be lived out

in face-to-face relationships. Even in these settings, we will often fail, but

we can hold it up as the criterion by which we are judged and to which we aspire

even in our shortcoming. In this sense, ethical love is the supreme norm that

serves as both goal and judge of all conduct. Realistically, however, we can

hope only for some rough approximation with decreasing levels of attainment as

we move away from intimate communities toward larger collectives. Nation states

are not likely, even occasionally, to become ecstatic in their devotion to each

other! Mutual, not even to mention sacrificial, love is hardly the guiding rule

of relations between General Motors and Toyota, nor does either have aspirations

in that direction. A workable ethical standard for the state and the nation will

appeal to the ideals defined by justice and the requirements of a moral

community. To say it otherwise, ethical love expressed as social policy for

large, impersonal societies takes the form of justice. What that norm involves

for New York or the United States as secular, pluralistic societies cannot be

spelled out here. Within this framework a strong but debatable case can be made

for capital punishment. Pragmatically and politically, of course, Christians

have to work within the framework of justice as defined by the secular society

in which they have their citizenship and seek to transform it in the light of

their own ideals.

PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

This brings me to thesis two. The most compelling arguments against capital

punishment can be made on the basis of its actual administration in our society.

I will list five of the usual points.

1.The possibility of error.Sometimes a person might be put to death who is

innocent.

2.Unfair administration. Capital punishment is inflicted

disproportionately on the poor and minorities.

3.Weakness of the argument from deterrence.The claim that the threat of

capital punishment reduces violent crime is inconclusive, certainly not proven,

extremely difficult to disprove, and morally suspect if any case.

4.The length of stay on death row. If there were ever any validity to the

deterrence argument, it is negated by the endless appeals, delays,

technicalities, and retrials that keep persons condemned to death waiting for

execution for years on end. One of the strongest arguments right now against

capital punishment is that we are too incompetent to carry it out. That

incompetence becomes another injustice.

5.Mitigating circumstances. Persons who commit vicious crimes have often

suffered from neglect, emotional trauma, violence, cruelty, abandonment, lack of

love, and a host of destructive social conditions. These extenuating

circumstances may have damaged their humanity to the point that it is unfair to

hold them fully accountable for their wrongdoing.

Corporate responsibility somehow has to be factored in to some degree. No

greater challenge to social wisdom exists than this. The conclusion of the

matter is that the present practice of capital punishment is a moral disgrace.

The irony is that the very societies that have the least right to inflict it are

precisely the ones most likely to do so. The compounding irony is that the

economic malfunctions and cultural diseases in those same societies contribute

to the violence that makes it necessary to unleash even more repression and

brutality against its unruly citizens to preserve order and stave off chaos. To

the degree that society provides opportunities for all citizens to achieve a

good life in a sensible culture, it is reasonable to believe that the demand for

capital punishment will be reduced or eliminated. The fact that our prisons are

so full is the most eloquent testimony imaginable of our dismal failure to

create a good society. Massive incarceration indicates the bankruptcy of social

wisdom and social will. It points to the shallowness of our dedication to

solving the basic problems of poverty, moral decay, meaninglessness, and social

discord. Meanwhile, our leaders divert our attention with the alluring fantasy

that capital punishment will make our citizens more secure against violent crime.

THE CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN WITNESS

What, then, is the role of the church? It is two-fold.

(1)Ideally and ultimately, followers of Jesus are the salt of the earth,

light of the world, leaven in the secular loaf. As such, Christians go into the

world with the aim of moving, lifting, and luring society in the direction of

ethical love. The vocation of Christians is to hold up ethical love as “a

transcendent gauge exhibiting the moral defects of society and thus spread the

infection of an uneasy spirit” (A. N. Whitehead). In particular, Christians

should work to overcome the larger injustices, social disarray, and cultural

illness that create an atmosphere conducive to violence. This work will involve

both political action and cultural transformation.

(2) Pragmatically and immediately, Christians will translate ethical love into

mandates of secular justice and work for the best approximation of the norm that

is possible under given circumstances.

Hence, Christian witness may be but is not necessarily directed against capital

punishment on moral grounds in principle. The choice is a matter of practical

discernment and social wisdom in a particular situation.Christians should

insist that if capital punishment is to be practiced, it must be administered in

a just way. On this count, present-day society fails miserably. My prediction is

that a society that becomes sensitive enough to make sure that the death

penalty is administered in a just way will then do away with it altogether in

favor of more humane practices such as life imprisonment with no possibility of

parole. In short, for the moment the Christian witness to society is this:

first demonstrate that capital punishment can be administered in a just and

efficient manner. Then we will debate with you as to whether capital punishment

is in principle necessary, fitting, and right or whether a humane society will

find non-lethal alternatives to protect citizens from persistently violent

criminals. Until then the church should say “no” to this extreme measure.