I’ve gotten a couple of responses to my post about the last execution in Maryland and it suprises me that people believe that somehow it is okay to have the same respect for a human life that the murderer had for the person whose life he or she snuffed out. How can that be? How can it be a realistic argument that since heinous murdering fiend didn’t have respect for human life, I’m not going to have respect for his. Doesn’t that just put the two of you on the same playing field?
When I started doing this work, I thought “wow, how could someone do something like (fill in the details of hideous crime). I just don’t understand it.” And, one day, a very wise attorney said “Be greatful you don’t understand. If you did, you would be like him.” So, I think to myself that its good that I don’t get why people think its okay to kill other people, in front of their grandchildren, or in an executioners chambers. It’s good for me that I don’t understand because it is what separates me from them. From the killers.
But, that’s just me.
Yeah, I completely agree with you. I don’t buy the eye for an eye argument at all. I do Public Defender work and what Ii find that most people not in this line of work tend to forget is tht the defendant is a human being too. He or she may have made mistakes, pretty poor decisions etc. but that doesn’t he or she isn’t entitled to the same type of respect that someone not in his or her position is entitled to.
It’s not just you.
Wesley Eugene Baker’s execution satisfied the three, sometimes competing, theories of criminal justice – punishment, protection of the general public, and deterrence. His execution sent the message, through extensive media coverage, that you will be executed for murdering law abiding citizens. How many people are executed for murdering a rival drug dealer?
I believe that his death will save lives. It is one more reason not to pull the trigger.
The problem with your argument is that you equate the life of the murderer with the life of his innocent victim(s). We make qualitative judgments with regard to life all the time. The hamburger I had for lunch was alive once too. We don’t devalue murderer’s lives. The murderers do. Do you have the same general respect for a murdering leech as you do for a Nobel laureate? Do you feel equally honored to meet both of them? Then why should you have the same respect for a murderer’s life as you do for the lives of the (for example) four young children he raped and killed?
I agree that we cannot let the behavior of others dictate our behavior toward them. George Washington addressed this eloquently in his farwell address to the nation at the end of his presidency: “We must choose our enemies carefully, for inevitably we shall become as they.” Just because a person commits a monstrously evil deed does not mean that we are justified in behaving in monstrous ways toward them.
The perspectives left by the annonymous poster are interesting,
however, because they come back to a central issue over which our culture is terribly conflicted: perceived innocence. It is this presumption of innocence that drives a lot of craziness around “right to life”
issues.
The most glaring example is that many who are opposed to abortion also favor capital punishment, with the implicit assumption that babies do not deserve to die, but
criminals do. What such individuals value, then, is not life, but innocence.
A more subtle example might be the indifference of many in our nation to the tens of thousands of civilian deaths which have occurred in Iraq as a result of our
country’s war on terror. While we commonly describe the casualties of 9-11 as innocent victims, we prefer instead to think of Iraqi civilian fatalities as collateral damage. We do not think of Iraqi lives as worthy of our concern in part because we do not think of them as innocent.