The Pagan Agenda

And now, in an effort to better articulate why I believe the present system of capital punishment is unjust, I intend to stick to the issue. I can think of more than one argument against this sort of retribution but to make a point I want to focus specifically on how it disenfranchises the victims (both dead and living) of their right to justice (since it is often the rallying point of those who endorse capital punishment that it somehow avenges the victims). This, I am about to argue, is disingenuous.

First, with regards to the deceased victims, one may argue they have already been disenfranchised of their right to pass sentence by the very crime committed, and that this is justification for an intermediary such as the state to intervene and pass sentence. Unless somehow premeditated and documented by the deceased victim, the victim’s opinion on the matter of sentencing is irrevocably unknown, and the state’s usurpation of the sentencing decision, and the content of that decision, is less based on the will of the victim than it is on the will of the people, or at least, as that will is manifested in the machinery of the American democratic system. And this is where I spoke of utilitarianism earlier, which is an ethical theory that states that “all action should be directed toward achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people”. Well, this ethical theory is a staple of the American democratic system. It is out of an interest to satisfy the greatest number of people that a state is authorized to usurp the right to justice from the immediate victims of a crime.

The crime was committed against an individual, or a group of people, and yet the sentencing is not theirs to pass, rather it is out of a political impulse to satisfy the greatest number of people that sentence is ultimately passed, and this will is manifest in laws. These laws in and of themselves bare no moral responsibility outside of utilitarianism, and thus the limitations of their mandates have no bounds but what the will of the people may suppose satisfying. That it may be satisfying to avenge with equal violence (or an eye for an eye) leads laws to be passed based on a detached relation to the crime by a third party. The laws themselves feel no moral indignation to the death penalty, and this detachment from the act of murdering, with no one in the sentencing process actually possessing moral responsibility, gives a false sense of justice being imparted.

But I digress, for I want to focus on the disenfranchisement of the victims…

I have already mentioned the deceased… as for the living victims, those familial relations (to make an arbitrary distinction) are also cut out of the process of sentencing except in rare circumstances, and even then, they lack the final authority. It is just blindly assumed by the utilitarian spirit of the laws that if the crime befits a death penalty that anyone in their right mind would wish it. but let us imagine a consensus among the immediate living family members of the deceased who due to their deep-seated religious convictions protest the use of violence… at such an impasse, the right of sentencing is (as far as I am aware) still conceded to the state in its desire to commence with execution. This is an example of the rights of the victims being usurped for the better good. Similarly, if the deceased was him/herself a rigid practitioner of non-violence the same sweeping mandate would be passed, quite possibly against the very wishes of the victim of the crime being adjudicated.

In conclusion I would like to propose that capital punishment is an excessive form of punishment that is for all practical purposes unnecessary since confinement in itself preserves the safety of others. Its only function is to accommodate base passions of vengeance through equal violence (which I feel ‘blood lust’ aptly describes) in a way that disassociates moral responsibility from all involved. If the death penalty is to be ordered I believe it is up to one of the immediate victims to participate in, so as to at least maintain some semblance of the moral gravity in the act of killing. Only when it accords with the will of the immediate victims and when they act upon it do I condone a death penalty. I think the role of the state in sentencing crimes of murder should be marginalized, so that after the adjudication is over, and guilt is proven, it is up to a consensus of the immediate victims to determine what sort of punishment is sufficient, up to the degree of punishment the guilty enacted.

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