A Few Thoughts on Capital Punishment

Last evening, two men were executed by lethal injection, one in Georgia, one in Texas. Troy Davis, the man in Georgia, received a great deal of attention and outpourings of support, prayers, and crowds keeping vigil in person and on the social networks; the other, Lawrence Brewer, did not.

Mr. Davis in Georgia was convicted of shooting and killing a white policeman; Mr. Brewer in Texas was a white supremacist who was convicted of tying a black man to the back of his truck and dragging him to death.

Mr. Davis' case went through twists and turns over the course of 20 years of appeals, including recantations of testimony that have led even some unexpected sources to question the prudence of his execution.

Mr. Brewer's case is comparably cut-and-dried. (One accomplice, John William King, is on death row awaiting execution, while the other, Shawn Berry, is serving a life term in prison.)

Aside from this piece by David Henson, which, in turn links a surprising story, and the Facebook postings of one consistently anti-capital-punishment friend, I've not seen any remarks denouncing Mr. Brewer's execution.

I worry when I see some people applauding executions, but I also worry when I see some opponents of capital punishment make mawkish attempts to turn death-row inmates into innocent victims of a vengeful state. The applauding of an execution has a jarring unseemliness about it that denies the humanity of the man on the gurney; on the other hand, the emotional efforts to remake some death-row inmates into innocent victims of the state deny that they have, in fact, been convicted of terrible crimes and have had their cases adjudicated, often all the way up through the appellate courts, even to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What is needed is an examination of the place that capital punishment has in a system of justice. Church teaching is a good place to go, particularly for Catholics. In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Blessed Pope John Paul II wrote:

It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.

In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: "If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person".

It is important to note several things in the passage. First of all, he does not call for the abolition of capital punishment outright, and in fact, he does leave it open as a prudential option for public authority to exercise in punishing criminal behavior. Secondly, however, and this is crucial, is that the execution of criminals must be limited to "cases of absolute necessity" where it would not be otherwise possible to defend society. In short, Catholic teaching is that capital punishment is a legitimate recourse of justice, but only in rare instances.

Paradoxically, it is only in growing in faith (and also in contemplating the virtue of justice, as well as in considering the role of the state) that I have come, in a way similar to Evangelical Christian prison chaplain Charles Colson, to recognize the legitimacy of capital punishment, at least in principle, while at the same time believe that it ought only to be applied in the most extreme instances. Examples of such people and circumstances that come to mind are: organized crime family or cartel members who are able to orchestrate murders even if imprisoned, serial killers, mass murderers, terrorists, and leaders of armed insurrection or attacks against government officials or buildings (such as Timothy McVeigh). Though I think there are instances when a death sentence may justly be applied, those instances are rare and exceptional.

In looking at the cases of both Troy Davis and Lawrence Brewer, I do not think either of them met that standard. Neither man was executed out of necessity; unlike some of the hypothetical examples I posed, neither man posed a continuing threat, and neither commanded networks outside prison that would be able to commit crimes on their behalf.

At the same time, it is vital for opponents of capital punishment to recognize that death-row inmates are there because they have been tried and convicted of heinous crimes, crimes with real victims to whom justice is due; death-penalty opponents do their cause a disservice by lionizing men such as Stanley "Tookie" Williams, Troy Davis, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, loudly proclaiming them innocent victims of a vengeful state rather than criminals whose executions are open to debate.