For lack of a better term, I have to make due in labeling myself as apolitical, meaning that while I hold certain opinions on social matters that occasionally align me within one political camp or another, I never intentionally seek to follow any one party’s ideological narrative, or support someone simply because they belong to party X, instead of party Y (in fact, if you were to list all of my socioeconomic opinions, you’d probably see me swaying from one end of the political spectrum to the other, across varying topics).
When it comes to the death penalty, I’d always been of the opinion that it is something to be opposed, and that those who side with me on this issue are doing a piss poor job arguing against it. To give a little background, I live in a conservative, right-wing, 2nd Amendment loving state of the southern United States (i.e. Texas), where the death penalty is heralded as the only effective means to combat crime. Pointing out that many of the urban counties in Texas hold the ranks of housing some of the highest crime rates in the country, despite also having one of the highest execution rates in the nation, is a non-starter with people here, since they can (rightly) maintain that correlation does not imply causation.
I would also freely admit that even if it can be conclusively proven that the death penalty does not deter crime (and I have no reason to suspect that this is not the case) I would refuse to use this as a valid point when debating the issue. Why? Because, for the sake of complete honesty, I know that if the evidence went the other way (that executions were deterring crime), my position would still be to oppose the death penalty on principle (I’ll explain further in a moment what I mean by this). For death penalty opponents to rest their case on this line of reasoning is a blatant surrender of any ethical high-ground, since their counterparts can easily corner them into accepting that if a utilitarian defense of the death penalty could be hypothetically presented, they’d be forced to change their position. Arguing on such terms is a fruitless waste of time and energy.
The second mode of arguing that my fellow death penalty opponents try to resort to is to point out the number of cases in which innocent lives were put to death before their innocence could be proven. This, too, is a bad form of arguing in my eyes, as death penalty proponents can again corner their opposition by turning this into an appeal to have more effective methods of ensuring that the guilty party is the one that is held accountable. Once again, the death penalty opponent seems to be arguing against the screening process, not the practice. (The argument that minorities are more likely to be executed than whites in America would also fall into this line, as it claims that the death penalty is merely biased, but not wrong, and rather than being abolished needs to be made more egalitarian).
Arguing that the death penalty is state sanctioned murder is equally pointless, since proponents of the practice will rightly mention that the same can be said of war casualties, smugly aware that for one to admit to being against war and military is to commit one of the greatest of blasphemies in eyes of the American public (discrediting your position on the spot). And I have met few death penalty opponents around here willing to own up to being pacifists.
By far, the worst logic I’ve ever heard is the statement, “I oppose the death penalty, because I’m a liberal.” This is the worst to me, because I don’t see what place politics has in this discussion (and, yes, I would consider the statement, “I support/oppose the death penalty because I’m a conservative/libertarian/green/monarchist” to be just as stupid). To hold a position due to it alining with your greater political ideology always makes me think that you haven’t thought about why the death penalty is wrong; you just accept that it is so because that’s what you think a good liberal should think. As someone who is apolitical, I cannot support such lackluster logic, as it implies that your opposition to the practice will possibly wane throughout your life as your political allegiance changes. Furthermore, I honestly see no reason why right-wingers and left-wingers could not agree on this issue, other than that both sides are more concerned with opposing one another, instead of actually contemplating on why they oppose/support the death penalty.
Having gone through all of that, let me now state why I, personally, oppose the death penalty. It can essentially be reduced to one fundamental point: I reject the notion that a human sacrifices is a valid or ethical stance, when it comes to administering justice. It has nothing to do with politics, or even philosophy, but everything with my opposition to the idea that societal vengeance has any place in the judicial process. I don’t need any utilitarian, or theological, or Socratic, or syllogistic argument to justify this position. And I dare those who disagree with me to say that they, in fact, do consider a human sacrifice to be a valid and ethical form of administering justice. Maybe they’ll disagree with that characterization, but that is not my concern. You are claiming that a person has committed a crime so heinous, that he must atone for it with his life, in order to redeem your trust in the justice process; this is a call for a blood offering to give you peace of mind. A passive admission that when it comes to justice, you are primarily concerned with satisfying your own thirst for punishment, not rehabilitation of the citizenry. An admission that you do not trust in the judicial process, and even reject its effectiveness altogether, if it does not work to satisfy your need for vengeance against those who step outside the law.
Before anyone tries the ever-so emotional tirade of, “you wouldn’t be saying that if someone you cared for had been murdered. You’d be screaming for blood then, too.” To this line of reasoning I must respectfully say, do not presume to know who I am, or what I have experienced; let alone how I respond to personal tragedies. And if we are to go down the realm of appealing to personal experiences, allow me to ask bluntly in return: what peace would it give me to see the person killed as a punishment for the loss of someone I cared for?–None! Is it going to bring the person back to life?–No! Nothing changes, the person I loved is still dead. The only ones satisfied in this scenario are those who advocate the modern equivalent of a blood offering, and they do so only to ease their anxious minds, not mine. If that is your position, go ahead and hold to it, but do not even for a second pretend that it is ethically superior to my own. What you want is a justice system focused on revenge and fear of retaliation, what I want is a society built on empathy and introspective enough to reevaluate its mores for the sake of all its citizenry (the good and the bad).
KRONSTADT REVOLT 