CHAPTER 2
Argument 14 (17)
The Death Penalty defends the punishment as such, and confirms that certain criminals deserve death
The natural ingredient of retribution is punishment. All legal systems all over the world includes the punishment as a natural part when a crime has been committed. The punishment has been visible in every country during all times. The punishment as such belongs to the civilized cultures.
That which follows justice is punishment, and behind the punishment there is dislike, or we may call it wrath. The wrath of society in view of the violent criminal’s or the murderer’s ravings, is proof that our concern, sympathy and compassion towards afflicted people is living and true. A society that does not react over the ravages of the violent criminal has lost some of its true humanity and its humane feeling, and it is natural if such a cold society does not understand or accept the capital punishment. The capital punishment is namely the most powerful way a society can show how much it respects, values and feels with its afflicted citizens.
The wrath that we as individual citizens may feel when we see and hear of the ravages of criminals we are not allowed to give vent to. None of us are allowed to even bend the smallest strand of hair of the worst mass-murderer. One who does that has, in that same moment, begun his walk on the same demonic path as the mass-murderer.
The state governed by law, the authority, on the other hand is the only thing in a civilized society that has the inherent right and duty to carry out punishments, may it be fines, prison or death. It is the duty of the state governed by law to channel the wrath of the citizens. But this is not done today. On the contrary the state governed by law allow the guilty ones to take part of care in different ways. A care that we citizens usually are unable to feel for the violent criminal or the murderer. This has serious consequences: besides the fact that justice is trampled to death it means that the wrath of the citizens are not only aimed towards the crime but also towards the State. The people will view the state governed by law more as a corrupted friend of the criminal and thereby the judicial system will loose the trust of the people.
The state governed by law needs to take its responsibility, and return to the role that it has had for all times; to be a channel for the resentment of the people by using severe punishments which sometimes include the death penalty.(1)
Or as the US Supreme Court was pronouncing in the verdict of Gregg v. Georgia: "In part, capital punishment is an expression of society's moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct."
The punishment is under no compulsion to lead the criminal anywhere. The punishment does not demand for the perpetrator to become a better human being (rehabilitated) or that others should be deterred (general prevention). The punishment has its own value and purpose, to inflict pain to the one who has caused others pain and suffering. And this is simply because the perpetrator deserves to be punished. The punishment thereby maintains a just order and feeling in society. That the punishment also sometimes may lead to improvement of the perpetrator, and that someone may be deterred, are only good side effects of the punishment as such.
Some criminals deserves to die
A violent criminal or a murderer deserves to die. This simple fact is enough and demands no argumentation since it is about a natural law intuition and a strong feeling – a feeling’s axiom. A soon as a child feels and thinks so and is able to say the words: "a violent criminal and a murderer deserves to die," this child needs no more information on the subject. Whatever intricate arguments intellectual abolitionists use in order to convert this child, whatever statistic they use, however they rave against the death penalty – the statement of the child still has such a inherent force that it crushes every word that speaks up against the death penalty.
It is a reality to most of us, since childhood, that when someone has done something evil we want the guilty himself to taste the evil and be punished, since he deserves it. This feeling is a sign of a healthy and sound soul. If we instead want the State to be good to the one who has done something evil, we digress from what has been normal through all the history of man, and choose to side with the criminal. That is neither healthy nor civilized.
A death penalty imposed on a criminal who deserves it also has as a consequence that most of us, and especially the victim – if alive – and the relatives of the victim, normally feel more at ease when the punishment has been carried out. The death penalty has for this reason an atoning effect for us citizens; it rehabilitates us and especially the relatives of the dead victims. Since this is something that deeply affects the emotional life it is not easy to explain the phenomenon, but most of us feel an inner satisfaction when a violent criminal or murderer who deserves it is sentenced to death.
That this reality feels foreign for some is quite natural, because today "punishment" and "retribution" are words that especially lawyers and jurists dislike. But it does not help that one has succeeded in almost exterminate the terms "punishment" and "retribution" out of juridical literature, we will always think and feel that punishment, retribution and justice are natural ingredients in what belongs to law and order. They are needed since our inner being – if healthy – confirms them; it is programmed in our genes. If not before, we will probably become aware of this when we ourselves or some relative or friend is afflicted by an evil hand.
Moral evil
The punishment as such also testifies that the moral evil is a reality. If there is no such thing as "evil" or "wrong" there is no reason for punishment. Why punish the one who has done nothing "evil"? If "evil" or "wrong" are only relative terms then punishments cannot be accepted, because even if I experience a deed as "evil", it does not have to mean that the criminal feels that way. Then care and rehabilitation only may be accepted, and the placing of the criminal behind bars if the perpetrator is considered healthy but there is an evident danger of relapse into crime.
But we claim that there are deeds that are morally blameworthy and evil, also in a more absolute meaning. We also believe that there is a majority of the people supporting this idea. Most people should consider murder to be (generally speaking) a moral abomination also in an absolute sense. The death penalty and the punishment as such will then confirm our opinion and our sense that there are illegal actions that are morally unjust and evil.
These are the reasons why it is necessary for society to somewhere have the face of wrath allowed to show itself sometimes. And the death penalty is this face of wrath – aimed at the violent criminal and the murderer.
Footnote 1. Here we quote an extract from a personal testimony of professor Walter Burns "… I did know that retribution was held in ill repute among criminologists and jurist – to them, retribution was a fancy name for revenge, and revenge was barbaric …The intellectual community denounced it (capital punishment) as both unnecessary and immoral. It was the phenomenon of Simon Wiesenthal that allowed me to understand why the intellectuals were wrong and why the police, the politicians, and the majority of the voters were right: We punish criminals principally in order to pay them back, and we execute the worst of them out of moral necessity. Anyone who respects Wiesenthal’s mission will be driven to the same conclusion … But why punish them? What do we hope to accomplish now by punishing SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolf Eichmann or SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Franz Strangl … We surely don’t expect to rehabilitate them, and it would be foolish to think that by punishing them we might thereby deter others. The answer, I think, is clear: We want to punish them in order to pay them back … We think they must be made to pay for their crimes with their lives, and we think that we, the survivors of the world they violated, may legitimately exact that payment because we, too, are their victims. By punishing them, we demonstrate that there are laws that bind men across generations as well as across (and within) nations … To state it simply, Wiesenthal allows us to see that it is right, morally right, to be angry with criminals and to express that anger publicly, officially, and in an appropriate manner, which may require the worst of them to be executed. Modern civil-libertarian opponents of capital punishment do not understand this … anger acknowledges the humanity of its objects: it holds them accountable for what they do … Anger recognizes that only men have the capacity to be moral beings and, in so doing, acknowledges the dignity of human beings. Anger is somehow connected with justice … If, then, men are not angry when someone else is robbed, raped, or murderer, the implication is that no moral community exists, because those men do not care for anyone other than themselves. Anger is an expression of that caring, and society needs men who care for one another … A moral community is not possible without anger and the moral indignation that accompanies it." From the book Punishment and the Death Penalty, with the headline "The Morality of Anger", Robert M. Blaird, 1995, page 151. Back.
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© David Anderson 1998, 2002
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