EU says Texas, Nation Should End Executions
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/politics/63904292.html
In a nationally run story the other day, the EU chastised the US and Texas for continuing to dole out capital punishment for crimes.
The issue with this statement is that the EU is trying to compare apples to oranges. On one hand, you have the EU, which is a conglomerate of European nations, all small and all diametrically different than the US. On the other hand, you have the USA, which is a conglomerate of individual states, whom are diametrically different than European nations. Having the EU condemn America for the use of capital punishment is like America condemning them for the use of the abusive VAT (value added tax) system, on top of their already exorbitant income taxes; which Americans do not do. One simply cannot apply laws and policies to all nations uniformly, as the geographical differences between the continents and nations create societal differences and norms that work for that locale. Americans should be offended by what is alleged; while 34 states use capital punishment, 15 (and Washington DC) do not, so by pigeonholing the entire nation as not ‘progressive’ is offensive to those states that have decided to cease the punishment. What Hafstrom, and many others in Europe, neglects to realize is that we are a federalist nation, made up of 50 states; essentially, we are identical to the EU as a whole and each state is likened to the nations that make up the EU in they each operate autonomously; certainly all the nations in the EU don’t have identical laws, do they? Of course not, because each nation has its own societal norms and cultural expectations.
To demonstrate the differences between the violence prevalent in each society, one has to look no further than the movies and shows we all watch on TV. In the US, shows like CSI and NCIS all glorify the job of the detective, which is perfectly fine, but the shows also employ graphic and violent scenes to grasp the attention of the American viewers. They do this with gunfire, where people are depicted shot; some simply react as if they are hit, but others show squibs to emulate blood splatter. They also do this with explosions, where we see a huge fireball or debris blown everywhere, with the occasional person included in that debris, blown away from the blast area.
Now let’s compare that to a show in the UK called MI5; this show is based more on the dramatic aspects of policing. There are guns displayed and drawn, but we don’t see the violent use of those guns, as we would on the American shows and when there is an explosion, we don’t see the fireball or the people thrown about; they show the aftermath and keep the focus on the people. So as you can see, the American TV shows are simply more violent at the core. When we examine movies from the US vs EU, the same differences can be displayed. If you look at American movies like Bad Boys and Miami Vice, they are predicated on police action and tactics, but what sells the movie are the explosions and extreme violence; UK movies simply to not employ this tactic to win over their audiences.
The violent pre-disposition of the American people really a chicken-and-the-egg argument; does the violence in society create the market need for the movies or do the movies create the violence in society? I won’t delve that question, but there can be no argument that the USA is a country founded on a history of violence; from our founding, to the slavery movement to the Civil War, this nation has been inundated with violence.
In 2008, there were 14,180 murders in the USA and our population was 304,000,000 (appx); this gives us 4.66 murders per 100,000 people. (1)
In the 2007 (last figures available) there were 757 murders in England and Wales and the population was 60,769,000; this gives us 1.25 murders per 100,000 people. (2)
So going off statistics alone, there are 3.7 times more murders in the USA, than in England, which only furthers the position that the USA is a more violent nation.
But lest we forget that the USA is also a rather infantile nation, compared to our EU brethren? The USA is 233 years old, whereas nations like the England, Germany, Italy, France and Spain have been populated consistently for over 2000 years; doesn’t it seem to reason that we haven’t quite worked out the kinks as a nation yet? As nations age and grow, they work out the societal issues that ail them and heal wounds of the past (as the UK was forced to do with Ireland); these changes don’t come over night and they are dependent upon the changes to policy and ideals as a nation.
Next, we have to address the argument of punishment itself.
The punishment for murder is generally retributive and one has to look no further than The Bible to see where we gain this retributive perspective:
But the underlying desire for retribution comes from a societal need to find closure for the ultimate of violations against society. While there is equal ground for the argument for an against capital punishment, there can be no argument that murder is the ultimate violation against a person, a family and society; given that the act of murder is indefinite, so do must be the punishment. Thinkers like Kant and Aquinas argue that one who murders, intentionally, relinquishes their right to life; by taking of a life, they themselves are denied the right to continue to live. The existential question of whether or not this is a task for man to enforce is a topic for another day, but the argument is founded on the moral belief that we are all beholden to our fellow man and must do right by him/her.
The old notion of ‘lock them up and throw away the key’ works well if one believes in incapacitating the criminal from the offending elements, but it does not offer retributive compensation to the victim’s family or society, as that offender is allowed to commit the ultimate crime and still retain their life. Some might argue by not putting that person to death, society is showing they are the ‘better person’ (so to speak) and not stooping to the level of the offender; while this is true in some aspects, society is not a 5 year old and the legal system is not a teaching tool for the citizens. Rather, the legal system is in place to set rules that society wishes to have, enforce those rules and to ‘right’ the ‘wrongs’ done unto them; with no way to offer retribution to society and the victim’s family, the legal system fails.
The US Supreme Court ruled in Coker v. Georgia (upheld in the recent Kennedy v. Louisiana) that crimes such as rape are not subject to the death penalty and with good cause: the victim, no matter how scarred they may be for life, still has their life. Now, that’s not to say that those crimes aren’t heinous and morally repugnant, because they are, but it means that putting someone to death for that crime, while our heart tells us is just, legally, it is unjust. So here we see some refute of the EU claims, as our courts put a limit on those who are put to death for their crimes.
The EU statement was general, but the major contention against the death penalty is that it’s racially biased and that innocent people can be put to death. Well, there is no denying that there is a chance that an innocent man can be put to death; that possibility, however, does not invalidate the punishment, only the implementation of the legal system. I think we can all agree that the advent of DNA testing has made huge strides in the proper incarceration of the right people and the exonerations of those who were wrongfully convicted; as I said, America has a rough history and we have to remember that the racial disparages that plagued us were commonplace as recent as 40 years ago. In the scheme of things, we’re progressing well and leaving that blemish in our past. Moreover, the United States has an exhaustive appeals process, where many inmates remain on death row for 10-20 years; to say the states give convicts every chance to protest and prove their innocence is putting it lightly.
Consider this: from 1992 to 1997, there was an average of 21.6 deaths per year from automotive accidents with fire engines, while there was an average of 30 executions a year in that period. (3) Yet even though there were 21 innocent people killed, we did not stop the use of fire engines, did we? Of course not, because the use of fire engines is deemed by society to be that of ‘the greater good’. Part of the risk of driving a car or walking down the street or living in a city is knowing that you could be innocently killed by accident or that which is malum in se; by living in a city or driving that car, we accept the risk involved. So too with the legal system, we accept the possibility that we might be arrested incorrectly or unjustly, but we do so knowing that the legal system in general is for the greater good of society. We also must we take into account that punishment is determined also by the desires of society; when a state bans capital punishment (as 15 have), society has spoken and the punishment meets their expectation. One thing that many will find interesting is the states with capital punishment are also the ones that generally have the worst crime and worst offenders; we could no doubt expect them to dissolve this form of punishment if there came a day when the crime subsided and the citizens demanded that change.
This form of punishment is also a quasi-deterrent to some criminals. Knowing one can be put to death for murder isn’t going to stop serial killers and those who kill with mens rea, it is a deterrent to those who might bring a gun to a robbery or another illegal act where, if convicted of the associated death, would get them a death sentence.
As Louis Pojman stated, “Imagine that everytime someone intentionally killed an innocent person he was immediately struck down by lightning. When mugger Mike slashed his knife into the neck of the elderly [man], lightning struck, killing Mike. His fellow muggers witnessed…the…events. When burglar Bob…shot the bank teller…a bolt leveled Bob, his compatriots beholding the spectacle.” (4) It’s logical to believe that witnessing something like that would give the average person second thought before killing another human with malice aforethought. The issue, of course, is proving that these methods are preventing people from committing murder; it’s far easier to show when the methods aren’t working, than it is to see when they are. But in studies of British youth before the death penalty was abolished, many stated they knew not to bring a gun to a burglary, because there was a chance it would be used and a related death would get them the death sentence; knowledge and fear of this punishment clearly made an impact and we can thusly deduce that fewer people died as a result.
So given that America is several hundred years younger than the EU states, it reasons to be that we still have a lot of progression to endure before the blemishes of our past can be lost in the annals of history and we can work out the issues that lead to the higher crime rates; then and ONLY then can we consider repealing the death penalty. To impress the views of the EU upon the USA, as if we’re barbaric and criminal is arrogant and offensive to anyone that bothers to research the crime of this nation. While the death penalty may be abolished in the EU and they may find that system of justice to be archaic, the system works for the USA, for now, and we must recognize the benefits this punishment offers us.
Sources:
(1) http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expanded_information/homicide.html
(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/feb/01/uk.ukcrime
(3) http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/1292/2/92640.0001.001.pdf
(4) Pojman, Louis. You Decide! Current Debates in Criminal Justice. pp 269-274.
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