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CHANGING THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT CRIME & PUNISHMENT
Mike Farrell
Actor; President, Death Penalty Focus
This is a subject that is not often discussed rationally. But for the recent attention to the case of Timothy McVeigh, it's too rarely discussed at all. It's a tough subject, it frightens a lot of people and confuses them as well, and doesn't lend itself to rational analysis.
Support for capital punishment has dropped in recent times from seven or eight out of ten, to today, when it is a bit over six out of ten. If the option of life without parole is added to the mix, it becomes either evenly split or slightly skewed towards life without parole, bringing support for capital punishment to well below the majority. That doesn't often make the news, nor is it likely to be acknowledged by political leaders who continue to support state killing because they say people want it.
Many people don't believe that a sentence called "life without parole" exists. They think life sentences are a turnstile operation in which bloodthirsty killers strike, are sentenced to prison for life, only to be turned out on the streets seven or so years later. None of us like the thought of maniacal killers roaming the streets.
Too often believing there is no effective alternative, people make a choice between the lesser of two evils. We are moral beings and most of us don't like the idea of killing anyone, but we find ways to accept the harsh realities. This choice is more easily rationalized if we can leave the whole question up to experts and go on about our business. But we're not leaving it up to the experts, we're leaving it up to the politicians - too often people who tend to forget that their job is to promote the general welfare. Instead they gauge their appeals to the lowest common denominator, evade the difficult truths, offer slogans instead of answers, and cut every imaginable ethical corner in the pursuit of gaining or maintaining power.
I want to address the harm we are doing by continuing the outdated, and I believe immoral, practice - one discontinued in every advanced Western nation except our own - of putting our citizens to death. I believe killing is wrong, and therefore that it is at least as wrong for the state to kill in cold blood as it is for an individual to do so in heat. Society has an obligation to hold itself to a higher standard, to remember that it not only acts for all but is also a model of appropriate behavior for its members. The cold, ritualistic display of killing those we deem unacceptable teaches that the taking of a human life is okay, as long as one is in the position of power and is acting in furtherance of a so-called just cause. That's a lesson too well learned, judging by what often takes place on our streets today.
Some believe in good conscience that it is appropriate, under certain circumstances, for the state to take a life. While I disagree, except in the obvious case of national or personal self-defense, I respect the right of others to come to different conclusion. However, I ask those who hold the other view, that they not only examine the issue on an abstract moral or philosophical plane but look carefully at what a death penalty system means in society: what it does, who it impacts, who it serves and what our moral obligations might be with regard to the mistakes it makes.
Those of us who believe the death penalty must be abolished are not anti-victim, nor are we pro-perpetrator. People who break the law should suffer consequences that are stringent, effective, appropriate and consistent with our principles. I do not believe stooping to their level serves any purpose other than to demean and confuse us as a social entity.
I've heard more than once that all I care about are the rights of the killer. While I resent the charge, I also understand the fear and the pain that are behind it, so I try not to respond in kind. The organization I chair, Death Penalty Focus, is proud to have many members of victims' families, both in its membership and on its board. None of us is without pain for the suffering undergone by those who have lost loved ones to violence. We've been too close to it to be blind to the awful costs involved. But like so many in our group, and others in the national abolition organization called Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, we believe that no good can come from continuing the cycle of violence.
Some say they will not rest until the slayer of his or her loved one has paid with his or her life. But one can pay with his or her life by spending it behind bars with no chance of release, being required to work and having the money earned paid as restitution to the family of the victim or to a general victims' relief fund.
For some the sense is that only blood will suffice. But for everyone with that view, there is another who will say, even through monumental pain, "Please do not kill in my name. Killing this miserable wretch will not bring my loved one back, nor will it end the pain that I feel of this loss." Victims' family members need our support to find their way back to reconciliation, to some semblance of the peace, hope and love that were stolen from their lives. Helping them do so is the proper business of a caring society. To suggest to these wounded souls, as is done regularly by our prosecutors and politicians, that their lives can only begin to heal once the death of the perpetrator has been accomplished, is to promise them something that will not be delivered.
Marsha Kight, who lost her daughter in the April 19, 1995 blast in Oklahoma, opposes the death penalty for Timothy McVeigh because lethal injection means he will simply be put to sleep. She says, "I have a life sentence." The son of one of Robert Massie's victims who supported his execution recently in California said afterward, "The hurt for my family will never stop."
How would I feel if my son or daughter was killed by some slime bucket? I would be filled with pain and rage and I might want to tear the bastard apart with my bare hands. But we can't make public policy to soothe the pain of one or ten or a hundred. We make public policy to take care of the common good, to promote the general welfare. The way to do that is to meet the needs of the individual as best we can, but always to reach ever higher in terms of human possibility, to set standards that reflect that possibility, and to do our damndest to live by them. We put away stoning, torture, burning at the stake. We've moved beyond that.
The Supreme Court a few years ago cited "evolving standards that mark the progress of a maturing society." Recognizing that, the Court is today revisiting it's 12-year old finding that there is no consensus against executing the mentally retarded. Just as we finally came to understand that our ownership and exploitation of black slaves was inappropriate and shameful in a society that claimed to hold high human value - and remember, slavery was not only fully accepted socially but was sanctioned by law and supported by God, or those who claimed to speak for God - we will, I firmly believe, come to understand that our continued use of the machinery of death to arbitrarily end the lives of our fellow human beings is just as wrong.
