COLUMN: When the state kills, why shouldn't others?

From Malik Wilson's, "RosZ," Fall '99 From Malik Wilson's, "RosZ," Fall '99The United States is one of the last industrialized nations to use the death penalty. Only Russia has a higher rate of execution. People who argue for the death penalty often follow a progression of critiques ranging from moral concerns to emotional appeals to simple logical equations. In each case, the point is missed. As we wait, people are killed. Our justice system has never been, and will never be, an abstracted set of processes that occur in a vacuum. A justice system is no more than the lawyers, judges and juries who people it, citizens living in same society as we who bring their host of prejudices, both conscious and subconscious, to the table. In America, it is impossible to separate the use of the death penalty from issues of class and race. When the reasoning for the death penalty becomes the "gruesomeness" of a crime, our value judgements shape our reality. When the rich murder, they are described as "eccentric." When the poor murder -- especially when they murder a member of a higher social class or different race -- their crimes are construed to be more horrific, more devastating. The image of a black man killing a white woman in her house elicits greater outrage than the thought of her husband taking her life. The emotive dichotomy between the first example and the second example has everything to do with issues of ownership and the transgression of boundaries. If the newest profile of serial killers became white Jewish males on college campuses, would you feel safe with our death penalty? Would you feel comfortable with a system in which white Jewish men and women are executed twice as often as everyone else? To rationalize the death penalty, people will offer this question. "But, (your name here), how would you feel if your mother or father were killed? Wouldn't you want to kill that person?" This question, dodging any system of morality or logic, tries instead to appeal to one's innate sense of violent outrage. The first point to make is that this question is completely absurd. It removes itself from any appropriate context in which the death penalty is functionally situated. The answer is simple enough: Yes. Of course anyone whose parents are killed would want to kill the perpetrator. But that does not make it right! And it does not mean that the government should be the willing practitioner of our collective death wishes. If a man witnessed a murder, he would not have the right to kill that person. Why do we grant the government that power? The argument over the deterrent value of capital punishment is one of the stupidest of our modern conversations. The fact that the argument exists reveals it invalidity. The logic proceeds as follows: even though we don't know if the death penalty is a deterrent, we will keep killing people until we find out. But this rationale has nothing to do with justice. Forcing women walk around with an "A" on their chest may deter adultery but it is not morally right. Castrating a man convicted of rape may be a deterrent but it is not morally right. Executing a human being may even be a deterrent but it is not morally right. Some believe that this is not a moral question, but one of logic. But when arguing the death penalty we unwillingly lock ourselves in our own false logic. Our society says two apparently contradictory things. One, killing is wrong. Two, if you kill, the government will kill you. Say that again? Killing is wrong, and if you do something wrong, we will remove your rights as a citizen. But if you do something really wrong, which will be determined by us, we will kill you. Not take your rights away. Not remove you from the world indefinitely. We are going to kill you. Rule number one is annihilated. And that becomes part of our society's moral compass and affects the choices we make. The idea that killing may sometimes be a way to resolve problems has permeated deeply into the American subconscious. Whether manifested as lynchings in the antebellum south, hangings in northeastern America or the guillotine in Revolutionary France, the death penalty is the institutionally actualized desire for communal retribution in the form of killing. Within a society, one cannot fight terror with terror. Terror breeds more of itself, settles deeper into our minds, informs our personal actions. When we let our government do what we know is wrong, we are ultimately affected. In choosing death, we legitimize the action we profess to despise.