From: kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu (Dr Nancy's Sweetie)
Subject: The Death Penalty
Organization: Rowan College of New Jersey
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 03:47:51 GMT


I sent my answer by mail, as requested, but since we seem to have a discussion
going I'll chip in my two cents.

I am unhappy with violence by Christians in general -- Jesus specifically
tells us that we should NOT kill in self-defense.  It may be legal, but it is
a direct violation of Our Lord's instructions.  There is some debate over how
to apply this to the situation of defending an innocent third party: should we
use force to stop a murderer from offing his victim?  How much force?

I don't have all the answers to those questions.  But in the case where you
have a criminal in jail, he is no longer a threat to anyone.  If you kill him,
it is not to protect innocent people.  I think killing a helpless person (and
someone strapped into an electric chair is certainly helpless) is immoral.


On top of all this, there is the problem of judicial errors: innocent people
are sometimes found guilty.  If you've imprisoned someone for several years
and then find he's innocent, you can't give the time back but you can release
him and let him have whatever time is left.  If you kill him, you can't go
back.  I know of at least one case where someone was convicted by eyewitness
testimony of a capital crime, and later released because the testimony was
found false.  If he'd been killed, there would have been no way to fix it.


There is also the question of deterrence: does the death penalty prevent
crimes?  This is a disputed topic.  Yvette Traylor asked:

> If the death penalty was enforce today, the way it was in the OT times, do
> you think we would have as much crime and adultery today?

I think the answer to this is "crime would be much worse" (partly because a
lot of things that are not now crimes would become crimes).  One theory is
that if you have severe penalties for trivial crimes (and the OT certainly
does), someone who commits a minor crime will feel he has nothing to lose by
doing something more serious.  Suppose, for example, that someone is caught
committing adultery -- he knows that he's going to die if word gets out, so he
has nothing to lose by trying to kill the person who's discovered him.  Since
adultery is as bad as killing a police officer, there's no reason to submit to
arrest: you have nothing to lose by trying to silence the witness.

Reserving the death penalty for `serious' crimes makes more sense, and enables
police to negotiate in cases where things can go from bad to worse.  For
example, consider a situation where someone has taken hostages.  If taking
hostages is always punished by execution, police will cannot bargain for the
lives of the prisoners -- because the guy who takes them will be executed
whether he sets them free or not.  But if he only gets 25 years in jail for
taking hostages, and won't be executed provided he lets them go, he's much
more likely to give up.

Also, people often rate crimes based on how severe the punishment is.  If you
say that adultery shall be punished just as harshly as premeditated murder,
one who commits adultery can see himself as a horrible crook.  For most
people, murdering someone is `crossing a line'; it's the kind of crime we
can't even imagine doing.  But to someone who already thinks he's as bad as a
murderer, he's already crossed the line.  The psychological barrier keeping
him from a "serious crime" is no longer there.

This theory is supported by empirical data from 18th-century England.  In
1780, England had the death penalty for over 350 crimes -- by 1830, it was
only 17.  Along with this trimming of capital offenses, the crime rate went
down.  (In part because certain things were no longer considered crimes.)


Our cultural situation is very different than that of the ancient Hebrews; the
code of law that they had is unimaginably harsh by modern standards, and you
would never be able to make it work without undoing 3000 years of history.
Some parts of OT legal proceedings are pretty much rejected by almost everyone
alive now; most western societies have moved to a `formal rational' code of
law.  Trying to impose an `substantive irrational' system at this point would
be a disaster.

(I don't mean to imply that the OT rules are irrational, it's just that this
is the term used to describe legal systems which do not include specific rules
for determining the outcome of cases.  By `specific', criminologists mean the
kind of impenetrable text which makes up legal systems like in the US -- an
exact description of every illegal act and the possible punishments someone
convicted will get.  Some US rules are (IMHO) hopelessly irrational, even
though it is called a `rational' system.)


People interested in issues of legal systems and theories might like to see
_ Society, Crime, and Criminal Behavior _, by Don C Gibbons.  It includes a
pretty thorough discussion of historical approaches to the study of crime,
just about every possible theory of crime, and a discussion of the death
penalty.  (It was my textbook when I took a class in this more years ago than
I care to tell you, but there's probably a recent edition.)


Darren F Provine / kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu
"Bad boys, bad boys, 
 What ya gonna do?
 What ya gonna do when they come for you?" -- the theme from `Cops'
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