Death Penalty

A day of sadness and shame for the Asian-Oceanian region

There is surely no excuse for a a modern state: Asian,  European , African, American....and certainly not Oceanian...to support the death penalty

On a day when we are all concerned about the heaving casualties of great human tragedy in Nepal....our hearts are opened to  "a country like this......a  city like this" .
Our common humanity should remind us that we are citizens of a Common World. where  it is convenient to suggest we are privileged to live in security.

We will forget most likely about Sukumaran and Chan, executed this morning in Indonesia,......the stupid boys who became men in prison and then were slaughtered.

While there is some evidence to suggest that the 'ordinary' Australian community still has a hefty proportion of people who think it's OK to execute people.....if nothing else good has come out of this latest injustice in Indonesia it is that Australian political will appears to have been galvanised.
 against the death penalty. Equally well there is a serious issue about the way popular media has or has not aggravated this situation

One moderate commentator said this morning when the argument that "they had been rehabilitated" was again being put forward....'Well they were not there to be rehabilitated but to be......." and the conversation sort of tailored off.
I presume he was going to say punished!
Having been to Gaol in the last couple of weeks (here) I tried to talk about the process of reconciliation that the modern gaol is supposed to be on about. Mobilong Gaol seems to be doing pretty well in rehabilitating others.

Gaol is not just about punishment....though that is legitimate....we also should be about rehabilitation.

Both Chan and Sukumaran  appear to have been seriously and wonderfully rehabilitated...almost against all odds... there seems little reason to think that this is anything but genuine.

There are bigger questions too:  China continues to be the biggest executor . Dare we confront this powerful trading partner
The US, our most powerful ally,  is the most shameful and strident country participating in executions.  Where is our criticism of them?

There is much more to be said about this.

The price is eternal vigilance

Nothing gives me the willies like the death sentence. Every now and then it just creeps up behind you and you think..."Given half a chance the populace would vote for it."
Its stupidity is exposed from time to time, and indeed its evil nature.
The announcement this week that China will execute two people involved in the milk scandal (you know where stuff got into milk, lollies...etc... and people died as a result) exposes some things about the death sentence that are worth noting.
Now China is China, and because they are big, influential and rich we usually just shut up and let them get on with it. But this is ridiculous.
Even in Texas they don't execute people for industrial malfeisance. It rather exposes that what China does so often with its penalties is to demonstrate that it is doing the right thing (in its eyes)...it is not punishing, it is showing it is tough.
Because we can see that it is stupid to even consider execution for such crime, it raises the question of whether it is justified for anything. Just what does it achieve other than the sense that we are tough.
What gives me the willies, then, is the fear that the bully in us..as nations and as individuals...often just wins out.It is not, and is never, about rationality.

Great admiration

I have only the greatest admiration for the relatives of British victims of the Bali bombers who urge Indonesia to not execute them (here).
I am becoming more and more convinced that as logical as it might seem, those of us who oppose the death penalty should oppose it!
Even for those who like the insanely laughing Amrosi and Imam Samudra seem prime candidates.
The issue about the death penalty should be separated from particular cases. That way madness lies.
If it is wrong (and I believe it is) then it is wrong for Himmler, for Milosovic and for Amrosi.
Surely we can adopt a more moral stand than this.

In the midst of life we seek death

Have we been seduced into a phoney discussion about the death penalty in Australia in  this pre-election insanity?

I always feared that in a period of chaos or unclear decision making, where leaders are more intent on getting re-elected than leading, that we would get some opportunist who would lead us back to the unthinkable position of reintroducing the death penalty.

So here are ten early-morning reasons why the death penalty is wrong

1. What if you get the wrong person?  This is the most obvious and yet most easily overlooked reason. But the stories about this are legendary. Our legal system is not based on certainty it is based on probablility...beyond reasonable doubt. It may be OK in some people's mind to send people to jail when you are 90% sure of their guilt, and accept the risk that in one out of ten cases you may be wrong, at least the innocent can be set free. The dead cannot be brought back to life.
2. It diminishes the State Most of us understand that the State should try to be exemplary, it should respond to our aspirations rather than our fear or anger. This is a difficult enough path to tread at the best of times. We do know that we should be careful and respectful of human life. The State should be at the forefront of that particular aspiration, not the principal player in reaking vengeance. I think that if we look at States that have the death penalty, the US, China...we see that these great nations are not improved but that they are diminished by such poverty of policy.
3. It is playing God.  This is not a particularly religious argument. It is about deciding that in our society that the chief safeguard on human life is the presumption that no one person or institution will act to take away the life of another. Even in the face of guilt, we say that the sanctity of life is such that we do not validate another person's guilt, or the general poor application of the law by doing what that person has done (taking a life). We remove from individuals the presumption that this decision can be made without reference to higher moral authority, and with the inability to be able to certainly discern that with any absolute certainty...ie we do not know that we have the right to do this,  we don't do it. Wherever you get your moral authority from (we call it 'God' in this example) this argument is still cogent
4. It is a poor and selective reading of the Bible. This again may not be particularly religious. It is about the sort of narrow reading of authoritative sources to only back up our case. So we will tire of hearing "An eye for an eye", as Ghandi is oft (mis)quoted as saying "An eye for eye leads to a world of blind people".  The truth is that the appeal to these sorts of external authorities like the Bible is so often the desire to paint in black and white what is clearly in all shades of grey. We could equally well cite "vengeance is mine says the Lord, I  will repay" or "I desire  mercy not sacrifice". Let alone as we begin to unfold that we are not a Judaeo society alone, but that a Judaeo-Christian society is not stuck in the brutal land of the "lex talionis" but is one which seeks 'a more excellent way'. This begs the question that, in Australia at least, there are a myriad of other cultural, religious and moral influences that need to be weighed
5. It confuses the notion of what sentencing and punishment is about Again it is easy to think that we sentence people to punsh them for their crimes, but in a civilised society we also seek to rehabilitate. It is a civilised thing to do to work with those who have wronged even when we are angered by their guilt, and offended by their crimes (indeed particularly when this is so) to seek their rehabilitation. It is a big and presumptuous call to say that anyone is beyond rehabilitation. To often the temptation to do this is this simplistic response to see this as black and white. 
6. It is an expensive option Necessarily the death penalty must be subject to the highest level of appeal. The American system shows that this can be lengthy and expensive.
7. It may actually exacerbate the problem of terrorism rather than ease it For the life of me I cannot see how martyrs are actually deterred by the death penalty
8. It is socially and racially abusive and prejudicial Given the undeniable reality that aboriginal and poor people are over-represented in our prison systems, we must begin with the assumption that these people will also be more in danger of the death penalty than others. It is not that these people are more guilty (a ludicrously simplistic solution) but that there are other social reasons which need to be addressed. To throw the death penalty into this complex mix is to further compound the idea of injustice.
9. It is brutal, not civilised Not all will agree but in a world where Western Judaeo-Christian society so often takes the moral high ground, at some point we must acknowledge that the taking of life is a brutish act. Even if we allow another to deliver the injection, or pull the lever or fire the shot; we are promoting lack of compassion rather than mercy. Indignation, however righteous or not, does not justify such brutishness
10. It simply is not logical. In the end taking another person's life will do nothing. Nothing! to bring back a dead person. It will not ease the pain. It will not make any grieving person feel better. It may actually make matters worse

To die or not to die.

As if the euthanasia and/or capital punishment debate weren't complex enough; pro-death advocate Philip Nitschke this week suggested that Tasmanian mass murderer Martin Bryant who is in jail "never to be released" is a prime candidate for some form of euthanasia. (see here).
I am not one who thinks that Nitschke should be dismissed out of hand because his views are outspoken or extreme (or more accurately because I largely disagree with them!) but I think he has done nothing to advance his cause by making this sort of comment.
It will actually expose for a lot more people just how defective and slippery his arguments are.
For me the issue about euthanasia is more about the downward slide.
That is, once you admit it, no matter how strong the safeguards are that you put in place, how then do you actually stop these safeguards being weakened as time goes on.
History would show that humankind, being what it is, we tend to slide downhill and strict safeguards get weaker. Some would think this is a good thing, I don't.
Curious argument
Nitschke's argument in the case of Bryant, is that Bryant has tried to kill himself unsuccessfully on several occasions, to continue to allow him to languish in the penal system is akin to torture and is therefore cruel punishment. Because Bryant is 'never to be released', the possibility of his rehabilitation whilst in jail is obviously being denied. What then is the purpose of his incarceration?
This raises the question about what we are doing when we send people to jail any way.
Are we trying to punish them, make them suffer or rehabilitate them. Or some combination of all three?
This is where I think Nitschke has exposed himself.

His unremitting advocacy for euthanasia has essentially been about relieving the suffering of those who are going to die. It is about a dying person making a choice, not about having the choice made for them. Nor is it that a person who is depressed about, or fed up with, or just plain bored with life being allowed to top themselves!
While Nitschke and others may feel that it is OK that euthanasia is purely a personal or individual decision, most people in our society don't. Euthanasia is for the dying, not the bored.
The particular case of Bryant, who committed one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, only further confuses the issue.
What do you do with a man who mows down tourists, adults and children unremittingly?
Most people are happy to let him languish in jail. As a country we believe that the death sentence is not appropriate. Not all of us by any means accept this view.
But that is where we stand today.
We will not for example extradite people to countries where it is likely that they will be subject to the death penalty.
While we may be drawn to the idea that Bryant should be executed. And I am not! We actually say, we do not believe that taking people's lives is a value that we want to incorporate into our nation's world view.
Martin Bryant, however deservedly, should not be allowed to be executed even if he wants to be.
We do not want to be the sort of society that has capital punishment. Why should a mass murderer be allowed to flout that? Why should Nitschke's euthanasia agenda be allowed to flow into this complex area too?
This is my point. The slippery slope.
While some may have sympathy with a view of euthanasia that hastens the end of a life of pain which is headed irrevocably towards an immediate death, most of us are scandalised by the idea that euthanasia might be used as a tool of social control.
Misfits like Bryant might want to die, as a society we do not believe that it is appropriate that suicide of those who are not terminally ill should be sanctioned, and certainly it should not be assisted.
The question is not whether it "could" be done, of course it could, but whether it "should" be.