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This week while driving to work I’ve been listening to Notes from Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. He lived and wrote in the 19th century. I can't believe I'm mentioning him, but one thing he wrote stopped me almost literally: “Capital punishment is better than nothing.” What a thought-provoking statement: Usually we think of “better than nothing” as being one step up, rather than all-or-nothing. But despite it being a good sentence, is it a true statement?
The day after I heard that quote, I took an online poll that asked about my feelings on capital punishment along with questions about my buying habits, and so the death penalty has been on my mind lately. Capital punishment is something with which I struggle mightily. I feel the same way about killing no matter how it’s done: It’s wrong. It’s wrong if you’re wearing a military uniform. It’s wrong if someone’s on your property. It’s wrong if you’re mad at someone and driving past their house with a gun. It’s wrong if you sign the order or start the electricity.
That doesn’t mean I don’t think some people have it coming. I totally do. I just don’t know how I could be the one to pull the trigger – no matter what someone has done. So how to reconcile these feelings? How to explain capital punishment some day to my daughter? How do you explain anything without someone indicating how you feel about it? Or should you indicate it at all? Isn’t that what we as parents do – teach our children our moral code?
For example, last week my daughter started ballet lessons. There we were, sitting in the waiting room reading a Disney encyclopedia so old the pages were disintegrating. I flip the page in the “magic” version and there was a witch being burned at the stake. AWESOME. I kept flipping, hoping my daughter hadn’t noticed, but there it was again: capital punishment. What is going on?
So is capital punishment right or wrong? What do we tell our kids about it, should they some day crack open an encyclopedia to the electric chair page or catch a trial on television?
One mom writes:
Demanding punishment when there is nothing to be gained for the victim, no money no reduction in future crimes, such a demand for 'justice' is, I suggest, middas S'dom, immoral, wrong.
Also on the side of forgoing the death penalty is this feminist from Oklahoma, the state with the dubious distinction of executing more women in one year than any other. She takes issue more with the practical application of the death penalty than the death penalty itself, which adds an important facet to the argument.
Crimes committed by defendants that are male, Black, or poor are far more likely to get the death penalty regardless of the nature of their crime. In fact, according to one study of cases in Philadelphia, being a Black defendant was more likely to get that defendant sentenced to death than being a defendant who had committed an especially heinous murder with multiple stab wounds or a murder with another felony.
On the other side of the argument is military wife and mother Shannon:
The death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment? No, slaughtering people in their own homes - killing a pregnant woman while she pleads for the life of her unborn baby, kidnapping an eight year old, raping and burying her ALIVE is cruel and unusual. The death penalty (when it’s actually carried out) is probably too easy.
I think a lot of Americans feel that we’ve taken our justice system and turned it on its head. Victims have NO rights compared to the criminals. Someone drags you from your car at gun point and steals your vehicle? They might see the inside of a jail cell. Heck, just watch a couple of episodes of COPS and you’ll see an officer pull up a suspect’s record and it’ll be screen after screen of convictions and arrests - and there the turd is, out on the street to claim more victims instead of tossed into a cell where he belongs and the key thrown away.
Apparently, all three candidates still in the running support the death penalty. I remember debating the death penalty as early as middle school, but I don’t remember what my position was at the time.
