Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Death?
From the New York Times:
The defendant, Steven J. Hayes, sat motionless at the defense table as a court clerk read, again and again, the jurors’ findings that Mr. Hayes should die for joining in the July 2007 home invasion that led to a night and morning of unimaginable terrors, of sexual abuse, baseball-bat beatings and flames, in the bucolic suburban town. Only one person has been executed in the state since 1960.
The crime was savage–beyond savage; evil–and Hayes’s guilt was never in doubt.
Has the jury done right? I’d be particularly interested to learn what my friends Richard Epstein, John Yoo and Bill McGurn have to say. Legal scholars, Richard and John will have given a lot of thought to Supreme Court cases on the death penalty over the years, as also to the practical aspects of the penalty. (Hayes’s appeals will take years, costing Connecticut taxpayers millions.) Bill McGurn? He’s a learned Catholic, no doubt aware that Bishop William Lori, in whose diocese (if I’m not mistaken about the boundaries) the murder took place, represents one of the Church’s–and the nation’s–leading advocates for abolishing the death penalty outright.
Richard? John? Bill?
Published in General
Never quite got this. Killing a monster like Hayes is perfectly consistent with a culture of life: We so value life that the most vile takers of life must die.
The Constitutional Due Process clauses bind the two issues, and they apply whether we are particularly educated or not.
Let’s make this more interesting. Allow me to respectfully call out Messrs. Epstein, McGurn and Yoo and ask them to respond.
Under their views (if I am discerning them correctly, if not, my apologies and please correct me), all innocent babies would be saved from abortion (culture of life intact so far), but preservation of the death penalty in an imperfect trial system would mean some innocent people would be put to death (culture of life diminished in favor of – what?).
Under my view, all innocent babies are saved from being killed, and so too are innocent convicts. No one dies. Culture of life respected across the board.
So who has the superior claim to respect for the culture of life, Ricochet’s legal starting lineup, or this lonely trial lawyer on the bench?
This may carry us a bit afield, but since it is in an area of my current research, I wanted to throw in that St. Augustine approved of punitive wars, and likened a nation to a Christian judge and executioner. St. Thomas Aquinas followed Augustine in this train of thought. War was not just for self-defense, but to punish wrongs by another nation.
By the way Peter thank you for posting this. If it’s not obvious, I’m completey jazzed by this issue!
Sounds like Augustine was a neo-con.
The appropriate passage from Scripture is Gen. 9:6 “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.”
This is part of the Noahic Covenant, and it prescribes (mandates, demands, insists, etc.) human self-government the role and responsibility of executing murders. It applies to all peoples on Earth for all time.
It might seem paradoxical, but acceptance of abortion would decline if the death penalty was applied properly (abortion became legal after the death penalty was abolished, both here and in the U.K.).
“The Constitutional Due Process clauses bind the two issues, and they apply whether we are particularly educated or not” @ Tommy De Seno
Mr. De Seno, I meant that it’s easy to discern the difference between a baby in the womb and a convicted killer. Even a child can do it. I didn’t mean to offend, or imply anything about education.
Scott Reusser said it much more succinctly than I did, so I’ll quote him: “Never quite got this. Killing a monster like Hayes is perfectly consistent with a culture of life: We so value life that the most vile takers of life must die.”
And John Boyer made it clear in his posts above that the risk of occasionally killing a wrongly accused person is not enough to abolish the death penalty entirely. That would be the tail wagging the dog.
Far more criminals sit in prison or on death row who are rightly accused of their crimes, who have been proven guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt.
And yet justice is denied. What do we say to the families of the victims, who live in anguish while the murderers sit on death row for decades?
Olive said: And John Boyer made it clear in his posts above that the risk of occasionally killing a wrongly accused person is not enough to abolish the death penalty entirely.
May it never be you Olive.
I think I see our differnece. You suggest one or two innocent lives are a meaningless sacrifice. Culture of Life? So long as it’s yours, apparantly.
Didn’t the Lord spare Cain from the death penalty for killing Abel? Didn’t He promise to punish 7-fold those who may use capital punishment on Cain? To wit:
Do you believe in the wrathful God of the Hebrew Torah, or the all-loving Father of the New Testament? I’m a Jesusonian myself and prefer the latter.
Whether one decides if the jury has done right depends on what relative weight one gives to many competing factors. Life sentence vs. capital punishment–consider the ultimate societal costs of long appeals processes and/or prison stays and how much punishment a life sentence would visit upon Hayes vs. the meting out of the ultimate punishment–the death sentence (and the separate issue of deciding how much suffering a life sentence adds up to vs the death penalty). Then ponder this–do we dare give the (sometimes imperfect and corrupt) State that much ultimate power? We have the certain knowledge that, when done correctly, capital punishment does in fact remove forever this threat to society, and as an aside, saves society a lot of money.
Is the potentially greater suffering Hayes might endure from a life sentence vs. the death penalty worth the extra cost to society? Is the potential of the State to make a mistake or be corrupt enough to misuse its power to kill worth Hayes’ sure removal from society and the lower cost of this method?
As to capital punishment deterring crime–I’m not sold on that…
Moreover, we so value life that we have no problem killing innocents. Does anyone have a problem with me killing some otherwise decent chap on the battlefield simply because his leadership is screwed up, and so out of patriotic duty or under threat of punishment off we went to war? If not, why presume a Judeo-Christian prohibition against killing this monster Hayes? Speaking loosely but not unfairly, the Bible is filled with warfare of the sort I describe. If the State causing death to moral beings acting as legal combatants in the context of a war (even a just war) does not present a theological problem, how can the State killing Hayes present one? Conversely, if you oppose a death sentence for Hayes, does not consistency require that you reject even so-called lawful killing of enemy combatants guilty of only being a soldier? If Hayes has a right to be free from State-sanctioned killing, why not that honorable but opposing combatant?
Never! Not under any circumstances, not ever. Too many wrongfully convicted people compensated with tax-dollars upon their exoneration and release for me to sanction the death penalty in any case. When we find a way to screen dishonest people from being Crown Prosecutors / District Attorneys, cops, detectives, and other investigators and litigators, then maybe. The wrongfully convicted break my heart more than 1000 murders. We will always be nasty to each other, and always have been, but to use the power of the State or Crown to zealously punish the innocent is as bad as it gets. I’d consider less final punishments that can at least be made right in the very frequent cases of injustice. At least a guy that got imprisoned and judicially caned could get X number of dollars per lash and X per day in prison, but how do you make whole a man who got put to death?
I’ve been following this horrific story in the NY Post as it has evolved. I’m unenthusiastic about the death penalty even after serving in law enforcement and seeing the worst of what society has to offer. I have concerns about it from a fairness, financial, and moral standpoint which would take more than two hundred words to explain fully. I’m effectively anti-death penalty in that if I were in a legislative position, I’d vote against it. If it were up to me, he’d spend the rest of his life in a super max prison cell when he wasn’t performing some sort of soul crushingly sisyphean style hard labor.
All that said, if anyone deserves the death penalty it’s Hayes. If he does ever face death at the hands of the justice system, I won’t lament his passing. He’s earned whatever man’s justice system can throw at him and whatever God can come up with on His end of things.
Why, David?
http://www.murdervictims.com/voices/jeneliz.html ·Nov 9 at 5:36pm
No need to lecture me about murder victims, as I’ve wept with their families. I was very close with a young woman who was killed senselessly and have been through the trial process as the key witness for the Crown. It wasn’t fun at all, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.
But, it doesn’t bother me the same way that prosecutorial misconduct in the name of “winning” at all costs does. I guess I hold public officials to a higher standard than I do criminals. I believe society should expect more out of those conferred with the responsibility of administering justice. I expect the evil people in the world to kill each other, and innocents.
There have been many men exonerated in my part of the world in the last decade or so. Several as a result of wrongdoing by the same cops and Crown. I follow their cases as I’m interested after my role in a prominent murder trial, nevermind just being interested in justice generally.
I would hate to tell Dr. Petit of Connecticut that the man who beat him, brutalized his wife and daughters, then burned them alive will not get the justice he deserves—–all because somebody, somewhere, maybe, after a trial by jury and a lengthy appeals process, could possibly be wrongfully executed. I’m sorry. That argument does not hold water, and it does nothing to promote the cause of justice.
To convict the guilty and acquit the innocent is a fundamental to a just society.
Words from Solomon, son of David:
Whoever says to the guilty, “You are innocent”—
peoples will curse him and nations denounce him.
But it will go well with those who convict the guilty,
and rich blessing will come upon them.
Proverbs 24:24-5
@ David926 “The wrongfully convicted break my heart more than 1000 murders.”
Why, David? Most murders are more brutal and cruel than the comparatively humane methods of state executions. When murderers lie in wait for their victims, then mercilessly gang rape and slaughter them, as happened to some teenage girls in San Antonio a few years ago, I don’t know how one’s heart wouldn’t break for the victims and their families:
http://www.murdervictims.com/voices/jeneliz.html
You suggest one or two innocent lives are a meaningless sacrifice.
That’s an unfair characterization. Trade-offs aren’t meaningless. Often choices are between bad and worse.
I could as easily say that you believe that protecting people from murderers is meaningless. I won’t cause it’s not true.
The death penalty has become so rare and its actual execution so delayed that it’s almost pointless anymore.
I’d rather see us bring back life at hard labor.
Come off it, John. Don’t be such a prig.
I am a student of philosophy too. And the Summa is not the catechism.
I didn’t “dismiss the Angelic Doctor out of hand”. What nonsense. I simply disagreed with an argument of his in the context provided by you.
And however faulty Kant’s ethics, on the point of this great axiom, he is right. A person is an end in himself, never to be used as a mere means. A person is a whole, never a mere part. John Paul (whose philosophy I have studied closely) calls this “the personalist norm”, which is to say, the ground of inter-personal ethics.
Do you know of any serious post-Kantian Catholic thinker who denies it?
In reading through the thread, there seems to be a lot of equivocation from those opposed to the death penalty: “I’m agin it, but in this case…”
To me, it is rather simple: Once one has committed certain crimes and shown thereby his disdain for human life, his own is forfeit. In other words, by his acts, he has signed his own death warrant.
It is unjust to force taxpayers to pay the burden of keeping him alive for the rest of his life. Once he has been convicted by a jury of his peers, give him an expedited appellate review within six months and if upheld, hang him publicly.
If there is concern about lying witnesses, unethical prosecutors, the remedy is again fairly simple: If you took part in the conviction of an innocent man by lying or withholding exonerating evidence, you have committed murder and ought to be executed, once convicted.
The moral questions and problems surrounding the death penalty are simply not simple, Matthew.
I think Prof Yoo provided the answer – the 5th and 14th Amendment indicate that the government has the power to take a life, but only with appropriate due process (which is where the pro-abortion argument fails completely). ·Nov 9 at 3:14pm
The fetus is not a citizen, thus they have no constitutional rights. See also Dred Scott for another example of how the Court determined who is a citizen and how the Court may deny rights to a being that is undeniably human.
From Roe:
“All this, together with our observation, supra, that, throughout the major portion of the 19th century, prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word “person,” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.”
And another thing, John:
As a student of philosophy, I would caution you against using the argument from authority, which, as the Angelic Doctor says, is the weakest of arguments.
I’d also caution you against an anti-intellectual tendency exhibited in such lines as: “I’ll take Aquinas over John Paul.”
Further, if there is a Catholic philosopher out there who does not hold that the individual is metaphysically prior to the state, I’d like to know who it is.
The Death Penalty reveals a sharp division between the heathen, who believe that physical survival, even in conditions of degradation, is preferable to extinction, and Christians who regard life on earth as a time of probation leading to an eternity of heaven or hell. [quoting Dr. Johnson:] ‘Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’
It would be a great convenience to know well in advance the hour of one’s death so as to be able to ‘concentrate’ on practical and spiritual matters. Most of us have the irksome and discouraging duty of living each hour as though it were our last. Only to the very wicked does a merciful society grant this final boon. The issue has been muddled in the last hundred years by the supposition that only murderers are so wicked as to deserve this final chance to ‘concentrate’. There are few of us who would not benefit from a fortnight’s ‘concentration’ ending on the gallows.
— Evelyn Waugh, 1960 Letter to The Spectator from The Good Death Diogenes, Catholic World News
I’m sorry katie, but yes, they are. The modern uneasiness about the death penalty (and criminal “justice” generally) stems from the erroneous assumption that people are basically good and can be reformed when they err. Historically, that has not been the presupposition about the nature of man nor does it correspond to reality.
If one has committed a crime, one ought bear the consequences and the commission of crimes whereby a life is taken, is an admission by the criminal that life has no meaning to him, including his own. It is not up to the state to question his thinking on that. Only to see that he gets a fair trial and that he reaps what he hath sown.
Either life is sacred or it is not. If it is not then choosing who should die is only a matter of circumstance, degree or opinion (Hello, Peter Singer). If it is, then is it man’s right to determine if a person should die? The murderer has broken this law, and will have to answer for it.
Having said that, however, let the argument be won or lost at the State level. The problem is that the Supreme Court is going to stick its nose in at some point and tell us all how much our opinions have evolved. Well, at least they’ll provide some laugh-lines for the ages.
Either life is sacred or it is not. If it is not then choosing who should die is only a matter of circumstance, degree or opinion (Hello, Peter Singer).
That is a gross oversimplification of the issue and man’s responsibility to attempt to govern all citizens in a just way.
John, Is it the Deterrence System or the Justice System? Whatever happened to just retribution? Punishment (not deterrence or rehabilitation) should fit the crime.
As to the Catholic thing for Peter; how about a broader Christian point (not being Catholic)? The Apostle Paul said “…whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.” If a man (or woman) sows death s/he will reap death. Further, Paul says that the government “…bears not the sword in vain…”. I think that it is fairly obvious that he was talking about capital punishment. Maybe we have become too enlightened for our own good.
As distinguished from a statement made with infallibility. Which means it’s Pope John Paul II’s personal opinion and Catholics are not required to agree with him.
You forgot torture. It can come before or after “Inject”, depending on what’s in the needle.