Waking up this morning to NPR’s Morning Edition, I decided not to shave – well actually, I decided I wanted to lay in bed longer, which necessitated skipping shaving in order to catch the bus – but as I lay there, I heard a few stories – more U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, tension continues to mount in Israel/Palestine, white-collar jobs are getting outsourced and college graduate earnings aren’t rising with the rest of the economy, 40,000 Tennesseans (and 45,000,000 Americans) have no health coverage. And it hit me: the world is not perfect!

OK, I admit, this isn’t much of a revelation, but really it’s just an introduction to the question that I’m asked so often, and that we all ask ourselves: with all these problems facing the world, why work against the death penalty?

The simple answer is that it is wrong. But then so is the lack of health care, worldwide poverty, war, terrorism, etc. And those affect a much larger number of people. No matter how terrible the death penalty is, there are “only” a few thousand people on death rows across America. So, why the death penalty?

To many, the death penalty is emblematic. There are problems throughout our criminal justice system. Problems of racism, problems of economic disparities, problems with a retributive, offender orientation rather than a system focused on healing for victims. The death penalty is the apotheosis of all of these problems, enlarged to (literally) larger than life proportions. We need to address all of these issues, through the entire criminal justice system, but the death penalty, as the most virulent example of this problem, must come first.

Why the death penalty?

The death penalty represents the total disregard for human life and dignity by a society. As a Catholic*, I always say that the death penalty is the ultimate test of our “pro-life” position, which is why nearly every Christian denomination in the country has called for an end to capital punishment, but I think this perspective applies to all people, including those who do not espouse a Christian or religious ethic. When the state takes into its own hands the power of life and death, when it chooses to kill a person who is already incapacitated and helpless, we, as a people, decide that human life can be degraded and stripped away. That there is no inherent dignity to the human person, because such dignity is contingent on something else. If human life and dignity is a right, and I maintain that it must be the foundational principle of our society (by the way, I’m not alone, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says the same), then we cannot accept that any society has the right to kill its citizens as long as there is any alternative available. Strapping an incapacitated person to a gurney and poisoning them clearly violates this principle.

Why the death penalty?

Because it represents the failures inherent in our criminal justice system. Because as a public policy it fails the rubric of deterrence, cost effectiveness, fairness, and justice. Because there is no justifiable reason that the state can provide to violate the most basic rights of human beings. Why the death penalty? I could have spared everyone most of this blog had I stopped with because it is wrong.

*TCASK is a secular organization which welcomes people of all faith perspectives.

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