Capital Punishment Is Immoral

       When considering such hot topics
as capital punishment, the thing to keep in mind is that rationality and
reason must prevail. Some people claim that issues like this cannot truly
be resolved, but this is only because supporters of the various positions
on capital punishment tend to shout past each other with ad hominem attacks
and simple emotional please. In a democratic society like ours it is imperative
that irrationality not prevail.

       Now to the heart of the matter.
There are two fundamental arguments against the state’s use of capital
punishment on those who commit violent crimes.

       The state does not have the
right to kill criminal offenders.

       In a democratic system like
the United States, the state derives whatever rights it possesses solely
from the collective rights of the individuals who compose the state. The
Preamble to the Constitution begins “We the people…” not “The
nation state called the United States…” The powers granted to the
government under the Constitution strictly derive from the rights of individuals.

       For example, individuals have
the right to own property and to maintain that property. If someone should
steal a person’s property, the original owner maintains ownership rights
to the property. The criminal justice system is nothing more then the
expression of the collective rights of all citizens.

       If a collective group of citizens
does not have the right to do something, than neither does the state,
because the state is merely acting as a proxy representative for the collective
rights of all.

       Using this model, it immediately
becomes clear that no collective group of citizens has the right to kill
an unarmed person and therefore the state is not entitled to that right
either.

       Imagine being locked in a
room with five or six other people. All of a sudden one of individuals,
John, stabs and kills another person in the room, Mike.

       You and the rest of the people
in the room quickly grab the knife from John, tie him up and throw him
in the bathroom.

       Now what are you going to
do about John? He’s clearly guilty of murder. You have two options.

       First, you can leave him in
the bathroom until you either find a way out of the room, or wait until
he’s no longer deemed a threat to the rest of the people in the room and
release him.

       Or you could designate someone
to go in and kill John.

       What would happen to you in
both cases once you made it out of the locked room?

       While imprisoning someone
does deprive an individual of his or her rights, a killer has clearly
given up his right to freedom and no reasonable person would condemn you
for that act. In fact you’d probably be considered heroic.

       If, however, you decided to
kill the murderer, you and your fellow plotters are guilty of first degree,
premeditated murder. While you certainly maintain the right to self-defense,
every law in the country agrees that self-defense ends when the perpetrator
no longer presents a clear and present danger.

       In other words, you don’t
have the right to go into the bathroom and execute the murderer. Stretching
this thought experiment further, imagine everyone in Michigan was somehow
in this one room (it’s a big room), and they all decided to kill the murderer.
Every one of them would be guilty of premeditated murder.

       Because no collective group
of citizens has the right to execute a person who does not present a clear
and present danger to their immediate safety, neither does the state which
merely acts as a proxy in defending and exercising the rights of the state.

       Capital punishment kills innocent
people.

       Okay, now that you’ve suffered
through that complicated thought experiment, the following is the most
compelling argument this writer has ever seen against capital punishment.

       One of the greatest mistakes
a system of justice can do is punish the innocent while rewarding the
guilty. When innocent people are imprisoned for crimes they did not commit
at least the state can offer some form of restitution. In capital cases
this is impossible.

       The murder of an innocent
person in an act of rage or hatred or greed is horrific. The murder of
an innocent person by the cold machinations of the state is unconscionable.

       The following is a list of
people who have been sentenced to death in the 20th century, only to later
have their innocence proven. A few were lucky and managed to show their
innocence before the state executed them. Most were not.

       J.B. Brown
       Neil Shumway
       Charles Stielow
       Maurice Mays
       Anastarcio Vargas
       Pietra Matera
       Gus Colin Langley
       Private A.B. Richie
       John Valletutti
       Ralph Lobaugh
       Frank Smith
       Edgar Labat
       Clinton Poret
       Lloyd Eldon Miller
       Freddie Pitts
       Wilbert Lee
       Calvin Sellers
       Thomas Gladish
       Richard Kline
       Clarence Smith
       Richard Greer
       Johnny Ross
       Robert Henry McDowell

       This column original appeared
in the Western Herald in November 1992.