THE AUTHOR
Christine Smith
Lethal Injustice
Punishments meted out by the state change as societal morals evolve. Society has changed both in its moral assessments and technological advances (for execution and incarceration), making that which was deemed just and necessary for public safety in early America, inapplicable now. BY CHRISTINE SMITH
No political philosophy respects human rights, individual
liberty, human dignity, and life itself more than libertarianism.
Yet, one of the major civil-liberty controversies present in our
society is largely ignored by libertarians: capital punishment.
In 14 years of involvement in the anti-death-penalty movement, I
have rarely met libertarians involved in the issue. Most concerned
with it have been from the left “progressive” political spectrum,
with the occasional, but rare, conservative who viewed it as a
“pro-life” issue.
It would seem logical that libertarians, more than others, would
care about an issue as grave as the state-sponsored or state-ordered
death of its own citizens. So why is it practically ignored?
Perhaps the reason lies in the highly emotionalized reactions each
of us has when contemplating the heinousness of some of the most
egregious violent crimes. But does the horridness of a crime justify
pushing libertarian principles aside, so that state-sanctioned
killings can take place?
As libertarians, we believe in the noninitiation of force. We also
believe that the only legitimate role of government is to protect
our life, liberty, and property from those who would use force
against us to take these from us. This allows for self-defense: the
use of appropriate defensive action necessary to stop another’s
aggression or to stop the violation of personal rights, but no
further force.
The difference lies in the use of defensive force, consistent with
libertarian principle, and offensive force which is a violation of
the inalienable right of every individual. Capital punishment goes
beyond the force needed to subdue a criminal and protect society. It
enters the realm of permitting government, on behalf of the people,
to become the aggressor by executing people solely for retribution.
The force of the state then exceeds that of self-defense, as it
becomes the perpetrator of the premeditated, cold-blooded killing
society says it rejects.
Some say capital punishment protects society from the future
possibility of violence from the criminal. This is a specious
argument. The principles that lead libertarians to oppose preemptive
military strikes must also be applied to individuals. A libertarian
does not condone the use of force or punishment for some presupposed
imagined violent act of the future. Nor can the putting to death of
one person be justified by whether that execution may have a
deterrent affect. To do so is to unjustly use aggression against
one, with the expectation that it will prevent aggression from
another in the future. Again, such use of force is anything but
self-defense.
Justified killing occurs only at the time one’s right to life and
freedom from bodily harm is threatened. Once apprehended, judged,
and incarcerated (including the enforcement of a life-without-parole
sentence), a violent criminal no longer poses a continued threat to
society. Thus, the killing of such an individual serves nothing but
to assuage the emotions of vigilantism.
Vigilante “justice” is not the justice of a civilized society
seeking peaceful coexistence. But emotions run high, and rightly so,
as citizens are repulsed at the incredible depths of evil some have
perpetrated. In human emotionalism lies our fallibility. Emotions
must not be allowed to determine the ethics of an action. For this
reason libertarians must, without exception, defer to the principles
they have accepted to guide them, so that emotions such as strong
anger and revenge are not allowed to cloud judgment and objectivity.
Moreover, why would any libertarian, even if he believed that a
sentence of death provided justice, trust the state in all its
incompetence, error, costs, and corruption to take the lives of its
citizens? Arbitrary and capricious, the death penalty has become a
tool to advance political careers, as well as simply being the
sentence for those unable to afford private counsel. Often, rather
than due process, racial and economic bias determine justice or lack
thereof in the criminal-justice system. Since 1973, some 130
death-row inmates have been exonerated and released. The possibility
of mistakenly executing an innocent defendant, and the
irreversibility of that punishment, is an unacceptable risk for
anyone who values liberty and individual rights.
Add to this the fact that juries across the nation do not consist of
a true cross-section of the community. In jury selection, jurors
will be excused from serving if they admit opposition to capital
punishment (a question asked during jury selection in capital
cases). The result is juries that are disproportionate and
unrepresentative of their community. According to a National Omnibus
Poll conducted by RT Strategies for the Death Penalty Information
Center (DPIC) in early 2007, “Nearly 40% of the public believes that
they would be disqualified from serving on a jury in a death penalty
case because of their moral beliefs.” Moreover, subsamples within
the same poll, though with a larger margin of error than the overall
poll, clearly demonstrate underrepresentation of specific groups of
people, with “over two-thirds (68%) of African-Americans in [the
survey believing] they would be excluded as capital jurors; 48% of
women reached the same conclusion, and 47% of Catholics.”
Although I was once a strong proponent of the death penalty, upon
closer examination and introspection, I realized that
state-sanctioned killing, death instituted by the government, is in
itself unethical. Whether it’s the execution of an individual guilty
of a crime and in accordance with a death warrant, or the massacre
of men, women, and children innocent of any violence, but whom the
government claims grievance against, the decision of life and death
is too great a power to be given the state.
Thus it is just as wrong for the government to execute those such as
Timothy McVeigh or Ted Bundy as it is to use deadly force against
those such as David Koresh and his followers or Randy Weaver and his
family. The power of government to kill citizens who pose no direct
immediate threat must be fundamentally opposed and subsequently
revoked in all cases. It cannot, in good conscience, be tolerated on
a case-by-case basis.
Punishments meted out by the state change as societal morals evolve.
Society has changed both in its moral assessments and technological
advances (for execution and incarceration), making that which was
deemed just and necessary for public safety in early America,
inapplicable now. Today, when offered the alternative of a sentence
of life without parole, many people exhibit ambivalence about the
death penalty. Support for it diminishes greatly when people are
assured that a life sentence would mean just that: a prisoner spends
the rest of his life incarcerated.
Save for self-defense, the only other just execution would be one
that is impossible: a truly restorative justice (one in which the
taking of the murderer’s life for example, would bring back that of
the victim). Barring that, the unnecessary taking of human life is
not a prerogative for those who value human life. Evil does not
justify evil. Nondefensive killing by the state is an injustice
whether implemented against one or many. Like other unjust uses of
violence by the government, whether internationally (such as in
unconstitutional wars) or domestically (such as the drug war),
capital punishment cannot be rationalized or justified dependent on
the situation. It is neither moral nor ethical in today’s society in
the United States.
As Pascal Clément, the French Keeper of the Seals, Minister of
Justice, said at the Sealing ceremony for the Constitutional Act of
23 on March 28, 2007, in Paris, “Human life is inviolable and
sacrosanct. No woman, no man can be reduced to the atrocities he or
she has committed. Each has, above all, a bit of humanity we must
protect, keep alive, at times save. A society is judged on its
members, but also on its rules. Killing other men and women is not a
rule appropriate to an advanced society.... You do not respond to
horror with barbarity. Our principles do not stop at the gates of
conflicts.”
The death penalty is inconsistent with libertarian principles. It is
the ultimate denial of civil liberties, a draconian punishment that
will remain as long as indifference to this human-rights violation
remains. Law and justice are not always synonymous, and this is
where libertarians must challenge the law. Advocating individual
liberty and limited government requires putting an end to the lethal
injustice of the killing state.
About the Author
Christine Smith is a writer from Colorado. You may visit her website at: www.ChristineSmith.us
This article was orginally published by The Future of Freedom Foundation.
