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There's Always An Exception
R. Alex Whitlock
As many of you are aware, I oppose capital punishment primarily on religious and moral grounds and would like to see it inded in the United States and around the world. I am willing to make some exceptions, however, for political figures.
Whether Saddam Hussein should or should not have been put to death really isn't my call. But in the broader argument of putting to death deposed dictators or other political or religious leaders, I find myself open to the argument that their continued life poses a threat to lives elsewhere. A deposed dictator even in prison can cause more death by inciting rebellion against the new government in order to restore him to power. If he's not alive, his power cannot be restored, and most dictators are careful not to have someone that can fill easily into their shoes (lest that person get ideas).
Let's take Fidel Castro, for instance, and say that he had been replaced by a democratic, anti-Castro, regime. Leaving him alive would leave open the possibility of his return. It would hurt the stability of the new government and could result in a(n another) civil war. There are a lot of people that would be willing to go to war to restore Fidel Castro to power but would be less enthusiastic or daring to put Raul Castro in place (though Raul is a political leader as well and his execution could also be justified). As such, Castro's continued life poses a threat to other life.
My opposition to capital punishment relies on a system in which we can be assured that the convicted pose no more threat to society. In fact, a true life without possibility of parole would be a prerequisite before I would even support doing away with capital punishment for murder. Society must be able to defend itself and any preference for the preservation of guilty life must take a back seat to that.
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Observations
Your "one exception" just about provides my justification for backing the death penalty, however.
I believe that the death penalty ought to be reserved for the worst of the worst in society, from which society needs to be protected at all costs.
However, the idea of "life without the possibility of parole" still has its flaws. Someone could still stage a jailbreak, or some other disaster could occur, that lets these people out.
What is the difference between (examples here) Charles Manson and Saddam Hussein or perhaps a mob boss, for example? The possibility of someone trying to break them out is at least as great as someone trying to break out Saddam. Then too there's the possibility of a paid-off official or a well-meaning dolt commuting the sentence to something less (or even granting a pardon!) and letting them back out onto the streets, and there's always the possibility that any of the three are in some manner managing to communicate plans and orders to subordinates in the outside world.
Now, where you and I probably rightfully disagree is that I think the death penalty goes a bit further; I think that anyone who shows the ability to stop and plan out the murder of another human being in cold blood probably is deserving, and I believe there's a case to be made for those who murder multiple individuals even if "preplanning" isn't necessarily involved, because these are people who've demonstrated what I consider quite possibly a pathological inability to withhold their urges to snuff out another human being and/or have shown that they are malformed in that they do not recognize other humans as being deserving of life.
So, I don't quite believe that those are traits that can necessarily be remedied, especially past the formative years of a person's development.
And if the point of our having prisons is to rehabilitate those who are rehabilitatable, then putting them in with these sorts of people and in danger of interaction with them, well, that's violating our responsibility to protect those who are *not* in line for the death penalty from those who are.
I thought about the mobster angle and almost commented on it. The important part is to be able to keep them from having any communication with the outside world. I support some pretty draconian measures to separate them from the outside world and I think it possible in a Pelican Bay style of prison to prevent them from running operations on the outside. If that proves impossible, I'm willing to make an exception for leaders of domestic organizations as well if they pose a sufficient threat. And unlike Hussein, there is zero chance that supporters can displace the system that convicted them (our system is less fragile than Iraq's, less extreme measures are required).
And like I said, before I'll really throw my support behind an abolishment of the death penalty, I would have to be convinced that life sentences won't be commuted. That's the biggest reservation that I have.
Pardons for first-degree murderers are rare (and anyone less won't be put to death), so I'm willing to risk that.
I don't disagree that the murderers deserve to die. But our system frequently declines to give people what they deserve for humanitarian reasons. And, of course, the ever-present concern about an innocent being executed (a risk that some people are understandably willing to make, just as I am willing to take risks that they are not).
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