Popular culture feels the burn of the death penalty
Charles E. Rice
Right or Wrong?
One of the hot toys this Christmas was Death Row Marv, a 6-inch doll complete with "chair, wired helmet ... and ... switch." Marv can move his neck, torso and arms. For $23.95, the ad urges the targeted 13-year olds to "[f]eel the burn as the electric buzz fills the room and he starts to shake and convulse. Experience the pain as the shaking continues and his eyes start to glow bright red. Enjoy the torment." As columnist Michelle Malkin noted, more than 65,000 were sold and there were "waiting lists across the country."
What brought this to mind was the media frenzy building toward Timothy McVeigh's May 16 execution at the Terre Haute federal prison. McVeigh abandoned his appeals on his conviction of blowing up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168, including 19 children and injuring more than 500. The government has written to 1,100 survivors and relatives of victims asking if they want to attend the execution. A closed-circuit telecast is under consideration. Hotel rooms in Terre Haute were solidly booked within hours of the order setting the date.
Is not the death penalty justified here? Are not all possible objections removed by McVeigh's choice to submit? The answer is "no" on both counts. McVeigh's acceptance of the government's decision to kill him does not avoid the question: Does the government have the right to make that decision?
The state, which derives its authority from God, has authority to impose the death penalty, but it can do so only "if this is the only possible way of ... defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. If ... non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with ... the common good and ... the dignity of the human person. Today, ... as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for ... rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself the cases in which ... execution ... is an absolute necessity are very rare if not practically non-existent," from Catechism, number 2,267.
That penalty cannot be justified as a means to retribution or to the general protection of society by deterring other offenders. Rather it must be absolutely necessary to protect other lives from this convicted criminal. The government is not so lacking in security facilities that McVeigh's execution is a matter of "absolute necessity" because "it would be the only possible way" of defending other lives from him. The alternative to executing McVeigh is life without parole, which can be as onerous as execution. As the Denver Post editorialized: "Death by lethal injection would be too quick and easy."
The death penalty, especially in a case like this, is a deceptive quick-fix that distracts attention from basic problems. As Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, said in opposing the McVeigh sentence, "Capital punishment is just another drug we take to ease other, much deeper anxieties about the direction of our culture. Executions may take away some of the symptoms for a time (symptoms who have names and their own stories before God), but the underlying illness — today's contempt for human life — remains and grows worse."
The death penalty kills the guilty rather than the innocent. However, as with abortion and euthanasia, mass bombing of civilians in Kosovo, etc., it reflects an acceptance of the intentional infliction of death as an optional problem-solving technique.
There is cause for concern, moreover, when the killing of a human being becomes a media event which will cater to the voyeurism characteristic of our culture of death. Video games, rap music and other amusements have accustomed many, especially the young, to seek pleasure in portrayals of the infliction of pain and even of death, on others. Death Row Marv is the poster boy of such a culture.
Cain was a more notorious murderer even than McVeigh. Yet God put a mark on Cain, "to protect ... him from those wishing to kill him ... Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity ... God, who preferred the correction rather than the death of a sinner, did not desire that a homicide be punished by ... another ... homicide," qutoed from Evangelium Vitae, number 9.
"All together," said John Paul, "we must build a new culture of life ... The first ... step [is] forming consciences with regard to the ... inviolable worth of every human life," from Evangelium Vitae, numbers 95 and 96.
Because man is immortal and made in the image and likeness of God, all human persons have a dignity that transcends the power of the state.
In his challenge to our pagan culture of death, John Paul insists that God — not the individual and not the state — is in charge of the ending as well as the beginning of life. Moreover, our "freedom ... possesses an inherently relational dimension" because "God entrusts us to one another," from Evangelium Vitae number 19. Therefore, "every man is his `brother's keeper.'" Even if his brother, like Cain — or Timothy McVeigh — is a murderer.
Prof. Rice is on the Law School faculty. His column appears every other Tuesday.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Tuesday, January 30, 2001
