Dr. D wrote about ‘Doctor Death’, the individual now known as the most prolific serial killer of all time, who killed 215 people with drug overdoses over a period of 25 years. he asked how i would feel if one of my relatives were among the murdered, if i thought justice had been done (he’s doing life, because there is no death penalty in the UK). and i thought, what is justice?
i oppose the death penalty. i oppose it because the justice system is so inherently flawed, with punishments meted out so unevenly, and so many innocent people sent to prison, and even to their deaths. but that’s not all. i oppose the death penalty because if killing is against the rules, it should be against all the rules. because in order to occupy a moral high ground one must refrain doing the thing one condemns.
and yes, recently i have been quoted in many comments sections saying i would happily toss Alejandro Avila off a cliff in a sack, or hold Charles Benoit’s face in a bed of hot coals. would that be justice? or is it a rage inside me, a quest for revenge? what is justice?
1. The quality of being just; fairness.
2(a). The principle of moral rightness; equity.
2(b). Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness.
3(a). The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.
3(b). Law. The administration and procedure of law.
so that would not be justice. and it would not be an expression of moral rightness. it would be vengeance. i do not like the rage inside me. i do not want to lower myself to the levels of these monsters, and do unto them as they did to innocent, helpless lives. i want to be civilized and just.
as i commented in Dr. D’s blog, there is very little justice in this world. life’s not fair, and humans have only the thinnest veneer of civility over our barbaric urges. read the news, it’s obvious. we’re a bloodthirsty and vicious race. look at history, it’s obvious. if there ever were peaceful and passive tribes, i’m sure they were killed off quickly, and their land and resources taken. the gene pool is filled with killers and takers.
and inside myself, i long to rise above this. i long for a truly civilized and enlightened society. not very realistic of me, is it?
…and justice. Is it ‘and eye for an eye’? …or ‘what goes around’? …or ‘he had that coming’?
You and I are both anti-death penalty. …but how to deal with ‘it’s just a cat’ or the horrible images in our brains about a little girl. I don’t particularly want to pay his room and board for the next fifty years. Maybe this is where we step back and are silent as the wheels turn? Then again, “not making a decision is making a decision”. …except I would be making a decision not to protest.
i still don’t know. i mean, the ‘what if it had been my kid’ thing. would i want Avila dead? actually, i think that life without parole is worse than death anyway. it lasts much longer. the lethal injection is just like going to sleep. no more mental agony, no more physical agony getting the ‘baby raper’ treatment in prison, which usually ends with the inmate either really messed up or in major lockdown for his own protection, or both.
to me, going to sleep forever would be less awful than life like that. it’s expensive, yes. but the whole thing about saying ‘don’t kill’ and then killing killers — i have a real hard time with that.
and yet, and yet, i think of the victims and want revenge. like i said, i don’t like this rage in me.
Well, that’s why executioners wore masks…
And only one guy in a firing squad has a real bullet in his rifle…
So no one had to live with the knowledge that they took a life. It’s all difficult choices that we (human kind) probably aren’t supposed to make. I kind of hate taking a solid stand, because I can run the risk of hypocrisy (you know like the “All life is precious, lets bomb an abortion clinic!” crowd seem to do?).
I have to wonder… we *all* have talked about “throwing the switch” at some point in our lives…
…could we really? I think a person has to have something in them to be able to take another human life. Most people I know would *never* be able to do it. Fewer *still* would be able to live with that knowledge if they did.
“I don’t particularly want to pay his room and board for the next fifty years.”
Actually, from what I’ve been able to gather, it costs the taxpayer more money (by almost three times I think) to execute than it does to support a inmate sentenced to life without parole.
I think the line between justice and vengeance is a tricky one too, kd. May I (or you) never have to have it tested up close & personally. But I’m against the death penalty too, for the same reasons you talk about. Life in prison – for all but the sociopath, who has no conscience anyway- must be a hellish punishment.
If violent crime is the ultimate result of ignorance, deprivation and hatred, then, in my pretty pink world, if we can work to change those things, then change can come. We’re blank slates at birth; we learn to be bad, by the ignorant ones around us.
I know–let’s kill all the ignorant ones! Sorry. That was stoopid.
Just wanted to add that the death penalty has been demonstrated over and over not to be an effective deterrent to crime. You’ve pretty well stated how I feel about it otherwise.
I think in this case idealism might be more important than realism. No, perhaps we won’t ever live in a utopian paradise, but we can make great strides to improve the world we have.
Thanks for your comments on my blog, btw.
“what if it had been my kid” provokes the same reaction in all of us. It’s not an objective reaction, I think it’s a very basic and natural reaction especially in relation to kids; most of us are programmed in the most primitive part of our brains to protect our children at all costs. Isn’t that why we have a whole system of law enforcement, courts, etc – why they administer justice on our behalf? They are supposed to be objective and impartial. I don’t agree with the death penalty either for the same reasons as you kd.
“i long for a truly civilized and enlightened society. not very realistic of me, is it?”
Maybe not, but it doesn’t mean we should stop striving for it.
Lee, it’s very true that the cost of prosecuting a death penalty case costs many, many millions of dollars, with the appeals process.
i also think that even a sociopath can suffer in jail — they have no empathy or conscience, but they can certainly feel pain. and people in for life without parole are rarely in the general population, so their opportunities to do more damage in jail are severely restricted, along with their opportunity to build any sort of interesting life behind bars.
i hope we, as a country, can learn something from the UK and most of Europe, in how they refrain from killing even their worst criminals.
I thnk many of us are in that convoluted, confused place. There seem to be no answers. Supposedly, if we want justice, we should first work for peace. But how to tackle all of society’s ills in one lifetime, as one person? So many questions, so few answers. But I don’t believe that just because there are so many, or the answers seem unrealistic that we should stip striving for them. Keep talking.
I’m with gOdOfMiScHiEf on this one. I take it on a case-by-case basis. I try to see all sides, and make my decision accordingly. If justice is to see someone rot in jail, then so be it.
But I would be a big fat hypocrite if I said I’d turn the other cheek if someone I loved ended up murdered. I’d want the bastard strung up by his balls and mutilated with a dull butter knife. But that’s me.
Well kd, I’m a bit late in making a comment (I’m on call). You have made very good points regarding the death penalty. Maybe I may change my views somewhat regarding it. Agree with you, there is little justice in our world today. When a crime is meted out to us or someone close to us, we do tend to react with rage and anger. These are just natural human emotional instincts. Perhaps they have evolved to help protect us from the forces and situations we encounter in our environment (I’m starting to make humans sound like wild beasts roaming a Safari). Controlling these feelings can be difficult at times (especially if they are instinctual). As for the idealistic world, as we say in Ja., we may “live in Hope and die in Constant Spring” waiting for it. I agree though, nothing is wrong with striving for it. Thanks for linking my post, much appreciated:-)
it served to open up a whole lot of interesting dialog, all the linking and pinging that went on with this.
now i’m trying to snap out of this deep dank mood i’ve been in all day, thinking about this among other situations facing us in the world today. it’s kind of depressing. i can’t even seem to focus on this beer here.
you’ve stated my own reasons for being against the death penalty eloquently and far better than i could. thank you.
as for being realistic, how realistic is the path we are on now? the only realistic thing to do is to work for a “truly civilized and enlightened society”… or eventually, there simply won’t *be* a society.
Well said, kd. Very well said. Could not agree with you more.
Ah…screw that.
My rules and morals change on a case-to-case basis.
This way, I don’t have to justify anything later on.
well, the thing is, i have that same tendency — to change my mind over and over, both in my own mind, and/or depending on the discussion i’m in at the time. it’s very easy to join in with the ‘kill the bastard’ mentality. and all this is, is mob mentailty on a small scale.
in the long run, i’m just not comfortable changing my mind this much. i think i need to decide on some principles and stick to them no matter how extenuating the circumstances.
when i was younger, i was completely pro-death penalty. i liked the feeling of joining in rousing discussions of how we, personally, would pull the switch or drop the pellets in the gas chamber. barbaric thoughts.
i don’t like that feeling anymore.
In all this deep contemplation, all I can find to think about after reading Dr. D is…
“He called it ‘Manchester, England’…”
Sorry, I just always think it’s weird when American’s preface names with ‘England’. (Just so long as nobody says ‘Swansea, England’ because then I’ll laugh).
The Shipman case has been going on for so long now that I’ve pretty much lost all interest in it. It still surprises me that his wife is supporting him throughout but then again, when she married him it was a different era and women were like that as far as husbands were concerned.
As for the death penalty, the last times we put someone to death in Britain, we still had to retry them all these years later to make sure they were actually guilty, so I’m not entirely behind it. However I am against a lot of the ‘life’ rulings because here a ruling of ‘life’ equates to 25 years. To me that is not life, they will no doubt still be alive when they get out. To me, ‘life’ means shove them in a cell until the day you open the door and find they’ve died of old age. However, judging by the outcome of the Cromwell Street murders, he probably will die in prison.
I never can tell how I feel about the death penalty – because I change my mind about it too. But then, I think that’s pretty standard – look at how long people have been debating the issue. It’s good that we question it, either way.
Meanwhile I think life in prison would be just as hellish – waiting on death row isn’t a picnic, but the prospect of staying in jail and knowing that nothing is ever going to change and you are there permanently, without hope of leaving – well, I think that’s punishment. What worries me are the people who say that the death by injection isn’t punishment enough because it’s too painless and nice. (These people scare the hell out of me.) On the surface it may seem that death by injection is an easy way to go – but it’s still death. And the lead up to that is still sitting around and realizing you’re going to be dead, no way out.
Meanwhile – just imagine if the UK had the death penalty and Shipman was sentenced to death by injection…
well, Mike, in the states we have a ‘life without parole’, which to me is as good as putting someone to death, better, if we later find yet another miscarriage of justice.
have you seen Shelagh’s latest? it’s about folks in the UK who would have been too dead to release when they were found innocent, many years later — there were lots of them.
ROTFLMAO @ Batty! Even given that I’m against the death penalty the black side of my twisted sense of humour appreciates the poetic justice of Shipman being executed by lethal injection!
I didn’t see the entry, but I know what you mean about all those people, becoming very common in the news. Trouble is, the last person we thought was innocent, was suddenly found guilty through the new DNA evidence we have in this era…in other words, there was no question he’d done it and the family were left to mutter about how they didn’t believe the facts, so to a lot of people that kind of proved that maybe these ‘miscarriages of justice’ aren’t that at all.
To me, life in prison is a good enough punishment, because they’re forced to live with what they’ve done (better if they have a conscience) and under a strict regime, denied a lot of pleasures in life. We don’t know what death is like, and for all we know there is nothing after death, which basically means they never have to live with what they’ve done…it may sound heartless, but I’ve always thought it was a good way of looking at it. Trouble is, there’s no space to imprison every murderer for a great deal of time.
sure there is, Mike. let all the potsmokers out. legalize and regulate prostitution. less vice enforcement, and more emphasis on violent predators.
see KD, that opens up a whole new can of worms. can’t be letting potsmokers out of prison because the government hasn’t found a way to tax the hell out of pot yet. can’t be letting women decide what do with their own twats because the government hasn’t found a way to tax the hell out of sex yet. but I’m sure they’re working on it.
I have spent many years in law enforcement, and worked inside prison, my father was a prison officer all his life. I too used to agree with the death penalty however I can no longer justify that view. The Uk criminal justice system, I may be biased here, is one of the best in the world yet still mistakes are made, can 1 unwarrented execution be justified? I don’t think it can. Yes Life should mean life, not oh we may let you go in a few years if you behave, at least then we have the opportunity to rectify any miscarriage of justice.