CHAPTER 2
Argument 7 (17)
The Death Penalty means the greatest mark from the State that it defends the ordinary citizen’s "right to life"
Some may chose to side with the violent criminal and murderer and let him become part of the human right called "right to life." They sometime ask if the state governed by law by an execution becomes guilty of a crime against this right. This may be the case if innocent persons are executed based on a primitive and corrupt judicial system. But not in any other case.(1)
The natural thing is that our hearts in solidarity are turned to the victim and all the innocent ones afflicted. We have to view this human right first and foremost from the perspective of the victim. And when we take it from all of those who are victims of brutal violence or murder the capital punishment isn’t only acceptable from the view of "right to life", it is a demand.
The violent criminal and the murderer who deny others the "right to life" and thereby shows the world that he does not accept this right, places himself outside that protecting sphere. There is no absolute truth that teaches that one can rob other people of their "right to life" and at the same time keep or demand the "right to life" for oneself.
The murderer and the violent criminal has by his inhuman crime, in principle, forfeit his "right to life" and is therefore outside the protection of this right before the state governed by law. In a moral sense, by his act of violence, the murderer and the violent criminal gives the right to others (the state governed by law) to do to him as he has done to others. A man can therefore under certain circumstances put himself in a position where he no longer is protected by the "right to life" but has ended up outside its sphere and can only wait for the judgment of the state governed by law.(2)
It can almost be viewed as a natural law that one who denies his fellowmen the right to live does not have an absolute right to maintain his own "right to life".
This human right - the right to life - can be taken most seriously when there is a powerful counteraction, a consequence, if a person violates this right. And there is no stronger counteraction than the death penalty. Thereby this human right is elevated in an unequalled way. If the "right to life" is to have a concrete value, then a crime against this right must be punished in the strongest way, and anything mightier than the loss of life does not exist. The capital punishment thereby gives the highest value imagined to the "right to life".
On the other hand, the "right to life" isn’t much more than a cheap and meaningless cliché if one who murders and violates this human right gets away with a mild prison term.
Man’s right to life should be unassailable, inviolable and should be defended with all means. The capital punishment does this and is therefore viewed as the highest defender of this declaration of the "right to life". And it is natural that nothing can threaten and deter people from breaking the law against man’s right to life as the death penalty does.
One who wants to maintain man’s value, man’s dignity and man’s absolute right to life has every reason to defend the capital punishment since this punishment is the strongest possible reaction against a criminal who violates these humane values. A mild prison term can not bring about anything similar.
It should be emphasized: The capital punishment means the most moral and righteous defence for the human life. If it is possible to violate and take a human life without being met by the sword of the state governed by law, then one of many consequences will be that the murderer, he who comes with torture and death, is worth more than the victim - the human life, and death will stand there as the victor. But by the death penalty the state governed by law defends the innocent human life and gives the innocently afflicted one the highest imaginable value.
To one who has, ever since childhood, been indoctrinated to see everything from the perspective of the brutal criminal, it may take a while to get used to this point of view. But it is necessary in this to have a conversion of mind, because this is about respect for irreplaceable values and rights; that the right to life even in a hard and cruel world should be fully respected. The capital punishment can recreate this respect in the most powerful way.
Footnote 1. A more detailed answer to this question is given in Chapter 3, part 1, point 4. Se also a lot of facts in Appendix I about the "right to life" and the death penalty. Back.
Footnote 2. Gustav Ermecke (headmaster of a Philosophical-Theological Academy in the year 1958): "The criminal has, in a way, committed social suicide, renouncing by his crime the community and his right to be part of it. The state is only carrying out what the criminal has already committed, which is his exclusion, his civil and juridical death. The criminal condemns himself, the state only draws the consequences." The Death penalty - An Historical and theological Survey, James J. Megivern (death penalty abolitionist), 1997, page 281. Back.
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© David Anderson 1998, 2002
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