For most of human history and currently in many populous countries, our species has used death, pain and the fear of them, to punish and subjugate others. Criminals, corrupt government officials, dictators and authoritarian countries inflict pain through torture and murder to eliminate their enemies, subjugate their populace and extract incriminating statements from detainees. This infliction of pain can be as innocuous as short deprivations to tortures that culminate in death. Currently around 112 countries use mayhem, mutilation, corporal punishment, and capital punishment including whipping, cainning, dismemberment, castration, stoning, hanging, shooting and lethal injection as punishment for blasphemy, homosexual acts, theft, drug use, apostasy, and promiscuity.
After September 11, 2001, our own country, in what was one of our darkest hours, justified and rationalized the use of torture, either inflicted at the hands of our own security forces or by proxy through rendition to surrogate countries. With the election of President Obama hopefully such practices have been eliminated. This history, nonetheless, indicates that, as a species, we have taken what in nature was a positive phenomena meant to preserve our existence and corrupted it into a negative, sinister force of oppression through which we manipulate others.
The US and Utahs’ Constitutions, similar to all states, prohibit cruel and unusual punishment. The Utah Supreme Court indicated that, “[A] punishment is "excessive" and unconstitutional if it (1) makes no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment and hence is nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering; or (2) is grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime. A punishment might fail the test on either ground.” The court further indicated that: “when the State causes suffering that is "wanton, insensate, or vindictive," when it inflicts punishment in a spirit of bitterness or sadism, it can no longer be called necessary. . . A punishment thus becomes unconstitutionally cruel when the suffering inflicted by the State exceeds what is necessary to serve the legitimate "objectives of the criminal law."
Therefore, just as cruel and unusual punishments are constitutionally proscribed as a sentence following criminal proceedings that allow proper procedural and substantive due process, our laws prohibit torture for any purposes. Yet even here, many states still impose against those who are arrested, detained or imprisoned some water, food, sleep and toileting deprivation and some level of exposure to the elements. Furthermore, 32 states, the U.S. military and the federal government still allow capital punishment. In a society that has matured considerably from the days when public torture, executions and hangings were part deterrent, part entertainment, and part civic duty, this is puzzling.
Certainly, if punishments should, by some metaphysical means, reflect the depravity of the crimes committed, many human beings deserve both torture and death. Despite this, our morality, as reflected in our constitutional pronouncements and case law, has sufficiently advanced so that we have foresworn torture as a punishment. Why? Because it is messy, violent, painful, gory, wanton, appeals to our basest natures, is often misused, cannot be retracted when erroneously inflicted and corrupts the societies and individuals who impose it. So why do we still cling to capital punishment--torture’s last vestige?
Has it somehow been civilized because our ability to inflict it has progressed so that we allegedly kill without causing pain? Is it because it has been taken from the town square to the prison enclosure and hidden from view that it is now benign? Yet, it is not civilized. Despite the white cloaked physicians who have replaced the black hooded executioners, it is still nonetheless, violent. It strips life from the body, and according to some, rips out the soul, beyond all reformation, from the same.
Between the sentence of death and its execution, capital punishment, like torture, inflicts the pain, suffering and mental anguish of fear upon the condemned and their loved ones. It, like torture, corrodes and debilitates the psyches and continuances of those who carry it out, from the jury or judge who are fed by its corrupting power over life, to the prison officials who prepare and strap the condemned into the executioner’s table. Its finality, its irretrievability, condemns us all when we err. Finally, who really knows if the executed feel no pain? Can that be shown by applying the scientific method?
The problem is that just as pain is a subjective experience, whether or not capital punishment is “wanton, insensate, or vindictive,” really has no anchor to any objective standard. It is wholly subjective. For whether or not a particular punishment is wanton, insensate and vindictive, is an evolving concept depending upon culture and often competing religious beliefs that are incapable of validation or empirical proof. Furthermore, is not the infliction of death an infliction of pain? It is pain that propels us to avoid any and all harmful stimuli, not just because of the pain that such stimuli cause, but also because of the final demise it might occasion. Moreover, under our Judeo-Christian culture, is not pain and death, God’s punishment? Therefore, is not the death penalty a usurpation of God’s authority and simply another means of torture and is therefore wanton, insensate, and vindictive?
In short, we cheapen the sanctity of life by being so presumptuous and so lacking in humility as to believe our system of criminal justice is perfect enough to inflict this type of ultimate pain on other human beings. No Judge, no jury, nor legal system should be deemed so perfect, so infallible, so beyond the corrosive influence of welding such power as to have the right to inflict torture as a means of punishment or interrogation, nor to impose the ultimate pain of death.
In conclusion, capital punishment and its infliction of pain and suffering serves no legitimate objectives of the criminal law and simply has no place in a modern penal system and should be eliminated as a choice on all the face of the earth.
Comment 1: Russell Josephson - God disagrees with you on capital punishment -- in fact, if society fails to execute the murderer, it becomes an complicit accessory to his crime: "at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man." (Old Testament | Genesis 9:5 - 6)
Comment 2: Loren M. Lambert - Hard to argue against God, nonetheless, the mosaic law is no longer followed by most. Christ repealed it. Besides, why just pick that one, plenty other laws in the Old Testament that we don't follow. You should read: The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible Audio CD – Abridged, Audiobook by A. J. Jacobs
Comment 3: Russell Josephson - The citation is not from the law of Moses, but a revelation given much earlier to Noah. It looks like you are starting to base your morality on your politics -- instead of the other way around.
Comment 4: Loren M. Lambert No I think the death penalty is morally repugnant, especially given men's imperfections and use of it as a tool to oppress and I know Christ agrees. There is no a human being alive that I would trust with such a power, especially those on the wacky rabid right and those to the lunatic fringe of the left. Is blood atonement really still a doctrine of "the church?" I don't think so. I think your morality is driven by what you think is a doctrine of god that is really not. The world will be an exponentially better place when no governments use torture and death as a tool. The only time it is justified is in immediate self-defense--individually and collectively.
Comment 5: Russell Josephson I fully agree with you that torture is immoral. It can never be justified because it violates the inalienable rights of man. Even when you invoke the evil philosophy of utilitarianism -- it fails to be just--see:
http://russj.livejournal.com/20537.html
The death penalty is not 'blood atonement' -- it represents the principle of justice. Paul said that the state acts on behalf of God in this respect:
"For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil."
(New Testament | Romans 13:4)
While we as individuals may wish to be merciful, only Jesus has paid the price required to extend mercy. The state does not have that authority.
"And now, the plan of mercy could not be brought about except an atonement should be made; therefore God himself atoneth for the sins of the world, to bring about the plan of mercy, to appease the demands of justice, that God might be a perfect, just God, and a merciful God also." (Book of Mormon | Alma 42:15)
Loren M. Lambert © May 5, 2014
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