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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
Nice job. ·Nov 10 at 8:51am
Edited on Nov 10 at 08:52 am
I’m far too egotistical not to pipe up – the topic is worthy of a separate thread where we raving papists can go at it hammer and angelic tong. I think it would be illuminating.
Speaking for myself, I like having non-Catholics in on the conversation. It helps us resist the tendency to be too “Catholicworld provincial,” as Jonah might put it.
Katie, there is nothing I’ve said in my argument that does not hold in a natural rights/law context or a social contract framework. A murderer, by his actions, breaches the social contract not to murder, thereby calling onto himself the penalty for breaching the contract. But ultimately, your reasoning is somewhat circular because the “Laws of Nature” are “of Nature’s God.”
I don’t have a problem with the death penalty provided that it is unequivocally clear that we have the right verdict. However, I also would not have a problem with life in solitary confinement with photos of the victims posted high on the walls of the cell so that the perp can be continuously reminded of why s/he is there. I sort of like Tommy’s trade regarding abortion.
The problem, of course, is that the ultra-civil libertarians keep pushing for life imprisonment to be something less than that, or define such punishment as described above as being “cruel”.
I must admit to not having followed all the comments, so forgive me if this territory has already been covered.
On the question of the meaning of the section of EV on the death penalty, I too have struggled with the degree to which it is binding, but moreso to understand the basis for it. After all, if it is rooted in the facts and circumstances of today, then by its nature it is a heavily prudential-oriented judgement (or at least, if a binding one, one that is focused on a very specific set of circumstances, such circumstances not clearly spelled out).
The best I can come up with, though, is the question of whether the general deterrent theory of punishment (“I punish you to deter others from doing the same thing”) is being objected to by the pope. JP II often is quoted as saying that persons are not objects but subjects, and as such persons are never to be treated as a means to an end. I think it could be argued that the imposition of the death penalty, if done for a reason other than the safety of others from the actions of the one to be executed, would constitute treating the individual as a means to an end. I rarely hear as a reason for the death penalty that there is no other basis to keep people safe from the criminal. In fact, I typically hear (at best) a general deterrent theory. I say at best, because some certainly make a retribution argument, but the line between that and seeking vengeance is very blurry and I would be leery of assuming society can safely walk that line.
Worth expanding on this. In thinking about the death penalty, a subject rife with moral questions, it’s worth asking whether the law should reflect some concern about protecting society from temptations to the immoral. In other words, as much as I understand the focus on whether the death penalty could be applied morally and trying to preserve the option for it in the law on the premise that it might be needed, I think it’s also worth considering whether society is practically capable of applying the death penalty morally. As much as I’m willing to defend the theoretical possibility of moral application of the death penalty, there would be nothing more sad to me than to see the death penalty maintained in law because of a defense of it in the abstract yet watch a society apply it immorally.