CHAPTER 2
Argument 5 (17)
The Death Penalty expresses society’s compassion towards the affected victims of crime
Both a sense of justice and compassion is about our inner being and our emotions. The difference between the two is that while the sense of justice is aimed against the criminal and the just punishment that he deserves, our compassion is aimed towards the victims.
The question about the death penalty can not only be held on an intellectual level. We also need understanding and compassion for the victim and relatives. Every victim is a person of flesh and blood, a part of society. Every crime against a fellowman is therefore at the same time an attack on every member of society - a crime against society. In that sense we are all related to victims.
The violent criminal and murderer on the other hand do not deserve the compassion of the state governed by law. One who in the most heinous way lacks to show compassion towards fellowmen does not have an obvious right to expect the compassion of the state governed by law. As soon as the word compassion is mentioned we need to turn our attention to the victim and his relatives.
When the capital punishment is noticed in media it is often the case that the criminal in a country receives most of the attention. The criminal is interviewed and the reportage usually has a character of sympathy, compassion and understanding for the criminal. But rarely is the crime committed described, the life of the murdered one, his thoughts and dreams and goals that have been crushed, and just as rarely are the victim’s relatives allowed to speak. This is not a healthy sign. But it is understandable. The media and culture elite that condemn the death penalty can not to much bring attention to the fate of the victim and his relatives. It could have devastating affects. People may feel that the criminal deserved death!
Most people will during their lives neither be related to or friends with someone who is the victim of brutal violence or murdered. Therefore it is natural that we are unable to get strong emotionally engaged when to us unknown people are affected. It is therefore even more important that we make an effort of trying to get to know some of the hard reality that afflicted people experience. Are we able to understand some of the anxiety that the victim felt before he or she died? Can we understand the pain? The paralyzing fear? Can we feel anything together with the life partner of the deceased? Do we see the fear and confusion in the surviving children? Do we hear the friend’s weeping? Do we see the lifelong wounds in the soul? Can we understand the sense of powerlessness in the relatives? Can we imagine the lifelong trauma?
Beside fact and argument and moral stands we also have to sometimes be able to meditate and place ourselves in the situation of the victim if we are to be able to rightly make up our minds on the death penalty in relation to the sense of justice and compassion. This is impossible to do only by attending intellectual debates or by conversation in a nice café.
The more empathy our heart can hold, the easier it is to confirm that the death penalty in comparison to a prison term more clearly and strongly means practical solidarity with the victim and his relatives. When our compassion is with the victim, the death penalty becomes like a mild summer breeze in a cold winter world. I.e. in the midst of a context of cruel death, sorrow and despair, relatives of a victim of crime can feel that the death penalty also was for their and the victim’s sake, so that they now can feel peace and have the ability to go on in life and also feel that they have been respected and valued as people. The death penalty can in the strongest way bring forth these feelings in every citizen. A prison term for the perpetrator can not even come close to this. It, on the contrary, expresses (an unhealthy) compassion for the criminal.
The dead victims deserve our compassion. All cultures and people show respect and honor for their dead in different ways. We see how far a people has gotten on the ladder of civilization by the reverence they show for their dead. Compassion for the dead can be to identify with the pain and anxiety the victim felt during his last few hours on earth, compassion can be sorrow and regret, compassion can be partaking in the grief of the relatives and friends, compassion can be feelings of powerlessness and wrath because of meaningless violence that has afflicted fellowmen.
Through the capital punishment society shows, in concrete action, it’s total rejection of the crime and it shows that we are completely on the side of the victim and that we suffer with the fate of the afflicted. No other punishment than the death penalty can make this compassion more clear.
One who is unable or unwilling to revive the sense of justice and compassion for all the afflicted and relatives can easily come to view the death penalty with hostility in the heart. It is a hostility that finally can make the heart totally closed for the tone of compassion that can be heard from the death penalty.
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There is many touching testimonys by relatives to victims of crime, here you can read one.
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© David Anderson 1998, 2002
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