An Eye for an Eye?
By John M. Swomley,
Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics
St. Paul School of Theology
The "pro-life" slogan and its political agenda set forth by the Vatican and adopted in the United States by some Protestant groups as well as the Catholic bishops, has seldom been examined as a whole. Abortion, for example, has taken center stage, and capital punishment has been largely neglected. My interest is to examine the death penalty in depth after contrasting it with other aspects of "protecting life" such as self-defense and war.
The state permits certain forms of self-defense, but actually engages in the direct killing of convicted killers, apparently unaware that it is killing people to prove that killing people is wrong.
The pro-life doctrine, by contrast, permits a person`s self-defense and the defense of his family or friends, even if it results in killing one or more people. It is only women who have no right to self-defense in a conflict of nascent life with their existing lives. They are denied the right to use contraceptives to prevent a pregnancy that would endanger their lives or health. They may not have an abortion even to preserve their lives or health if damage to health would lead to an early death.
Pro-life doctrine does not apply to killing in war, as evident in Vatican concordats with war-making states. Its agents in Argentina even gave consent to the killing of civilians suspected of being Communists or sympathetic to them. (Emilio Mignone, Witness to the Truth: The Complicity of Church and Dictatorship in Argentina 1976-1983, Orbis Books)
Although pro-life doctrine is selective, its absolute opposition to the death penalty has a completely rational and ethical validity. There is no conflict of life with life in the sentencing of a person for murder, since the state has the power to isolate the convicted killer from society and even from other prisoners. There is no obvious discrimination such as occurs against women in a patriarchal religious or social system. Men and women can receive similar sentences and similar treatment in prison.
An ethical examination of the death penalty should include a biblical analysis. The Bible provides no clear justification for capital punishment in spite of statements that an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, and life for life are justified. In practice, society has rejected the first part; we would consider barbaric the taking of a person`s eye for causing the loss of an eye, or a tooth for the loss of a tooth.
The Bible also is not consistent in providing a death penalty for those responsible for the death of others. The book of Hebrews, for example, praises murderers such as Gideon, Samson, and David as "men of faith." And in the book of Acts David is called the "servant of God."
The Bible, however, not only includes statements excusing killing, it also describes some important acts against the death penalty. The first murder in the Bible, of course, is that of Cain killing Abel. In this instance, God did not kill Cain. His punishment was to make him a wanderer with a mark on his forehead so that no one will kill him. To kill in revenge or to permit killing a murderer would have justified killing as such.
Although David engaged in killing, his punishment from God was a refusal to let him build the Temple because his hands were stained with blood. In the scriptures the penalty for a woman caught in adultery was death, but Jesus rejected that penalty with the admonition, "Sin no more."
When Paul was in prison with a runaway slave who could be killed for such flight, Paul sent him back to his master with a strong plea to the master to accept him as a brother.
In other words, the penalty of death is not a result of religious or moral values, but a simple act of vengeance exercised by government and supported vociferously by some of its citizens.
The chief basis on which any severe punishment can be morally justified is the encouragement of expiation, or making amends for wrongdoing. Punishment that does not permit the possibility of expiation or a change in character or attitude is inherently wrong. Execution does not permit atonement or any future action to make amends for the crime committed. The death sentence automatically precludes earning respect or commutation of sentence either by working to finance or support victims of the crime or by performing an extended public service as a means of public acknowledgment of a changed life.
From the standpoint of society, punishment without a social effort to reform or educate the prisoner is an acknowledgment that the general public is unconcerned about the value of life and the possibility of changed lives. The state, by taking life in revenge, sets no higher standard than the person who also kills in an act of anger, hate, or revenge. In effect it thereby says human life is not inherently valuable or worth saving, that life is judged by a crime or crimes, not by earlier good conduct or the possibility of repentance.
Does the state have any responsibility for the social conditions of poverty, exaltation of power, or a culture that glorifies violence and makes weapons easily acceptable, a culture that permits corruption in high places or by wealthy corporations with little if any punishment?
Emil Brunner, a German theologian, wrote: "In every crime the first and the chief criminal is—society. For it breeds crime by the brutality of its economic `order,` by the paucity of its provision for those who grow up in morally impossible conditions, by the harshness with which it throws upon the street all those who are less talented and successful in life, by the lovelessness with which it meets those who are least adapted to its requirements."
Then Brunner adds, "A society which invents the most horrible technical devices for war" and indoctrinates "every member of a nation" regarding "the use of these methods in order to employ them against his brother man . . . has no moral right to wax indignant over the individual criminal, but it should be horrified at his crime as our own." (The Divine Imperative, 476).
Moreover, the death penalty is often wrongfully applied to innocent victims who cannot afford a costly legal defense. It is also unjust in both state and federal jurisdictions when innocent suspects are tried, convicted, and sentenced without appeal because politicians want to appear tough on crime, or courts are too crowded with other cases to hear appeals.
Churches also share responsibility for a culture, especially when women are not treated with complete equality with men and unable to make moral choices about their lives, vocations, and future. Even those concerned about domestic violence, out of which so many murders occur, should doubt the value to surviving children or society as a whole, of the killing of the surviving parent.
Now that recent studies have pierced the silence about racism in the sentencing of black citizens far in excess of whites, there is even less excuse for taking the lives of those on Death Row.
It is, of course, impossible to write about the death penalty as if the entire system of criminal administration short of capital punishment is humane. Prisons have long been known as breeders of crime, where prisoners are brutalized both by guards and by other prisoners. Reforming the entire system is another challenge for society, but the place to begin is by acknowledging that the state must set an example. If it is wrong for individuals to kill people, it is wrong for the state itself to justify killing by making it legal to kill.
