Staying Grounded

Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

-George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"

My Piece for the Whittier Student Publication, The Zealous Advocate

Does Criticism of the Death Penalty Question the Legitimacy of our Justice System?

The Troy Davis execution was a highly publicized and emotionally charged event.  It temporarily brought to the forefront of the news cycle the ongoing (inter)national debate regarding the morality of the death penalty.  While the forms of the arguments against the death penalty are diverse, the particular one evoked by Davis’s plight may be succinctly put as “the inevitability of caprice and mistake,” coined by Charles Black.  However, this idea is not just problematic of the death penalty; it is a problem of our justice system in general.  We all know those common tropes: all prisoners are innocent men except for their incompetent lawyers, or they did not actually commit the crime, or they were framed by the cops.  Although, occasionally, these do turn out to be true, we nevertheless accept the legitimacy of our justice system in the face of these occasional errors.  And right now, the majority of the country is willing to accept a margin of error so that death sentences are still carried out.

So, even if it were true that his case were a slam dunk, and all the witness recantations turned out to be credible, the dilemma of an innocent man dying so that, say, nine hundred ninety nine actually guilty murderers are put to death is not going to advance the cause of anti-death penalty advocates.  While this sort of situation does tug at the heart strings (we think, "What if I were innocent? I wouldn't want to be put to death."), it isn't going to convince those who believe in such an extreme form of retributive punishment i.e. those who are willing to accept the possibility of an innocent person dying in order to carry out this absolute punishment on convicted murderers in their respective states.  Publicity stunts like the one performed at the expense of Troy Davis and his family are not going to advance the debate; they serve merely to further entrench those who already have a moral stake in the discussion.  Although I am sure Troy Davis and his loved ones were heartened by the outpouring of support for his cause, I cannot help but think that it also filled them with a sense of false hope realized by heartbreaking let-down.

What is needed is thoughtful discussion that is separated from the irrationality of pure emotion.  Until we as a country are unable to accept the idea that an innocent man might by killed by the hand of their own community, the death penalty will continue.