Humanity's Death

A botched execution seems an oxymoron unless the person being executed survives. Anything else seems the very point of the exercise. In the Oklahoma case, however, the execution has been deemed a failure and subsequent killings halted, despite the death of the intended. The problem, it seems, is not that he died, only that he died in a way contrary to the way we intended. 

I say we because parts of the United States still employ the death penalty. I say we because how I feel about the topic is conflicted and complex.

I know the American judicial system is suspect at best. Langston Hughes said it aptly:

That justice is a blind goddess

to which we black are wise;

her bandages hide to festering sores

that once, perhaps, were eyes.

And so how can I, in good conscious, support state sanctioned murder when I know that people of color are more likely to find themselves there because our system is more likely to see their crimes fitting of the gas chamber or electric chair or whatever other devices of death a state sees fit to use.

One step back, away from the race lens, and I am struck by the ever changing landscape of evidence. The technology that sets innocent people free after years of unwarranted imprisonment or steps away from execution. How can I support a permanent solution when the degree of certainty in crimes seems to be ever decreasing?

 

There is, of course, the most basic of questions. The support of murder as a punishment or deterrent or consequence of some other crime. If we kill because someone else killed does that make us avengers or simply reflect back the deed that was already done? Does it simply compound the grief?

The conundrum calls to mind “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”. The pervading theology of the time is Mercerism and at its core is empathy…so much so that Androids are detectable by their inability to express true empathy. Murder of any living thing is unconscionable with the exception of androids.

“An android,” he said, “doesn’t care what happens to another android. That’s one of the indications we look for.”

“Then,” Miss Luft said, “you must be an android.”

That stopped him; he stared at her.

“Because,” she continued, “your job is to kill them, isn’t it?”

And while it isn’t the same thing, exactly, I wonder if at our core we relinquish a piece of our humanity when we kill – even for presumably good reason. Are there really people so horrible on earth that their mere existence is too much for our fragile world? Does their death make us safer or simply more hypocritical that we brought them to the same fate they brought their victims? 

I’d be lying if I said I’d never felt death might be the only punishment worthy of someone. Ironically, it is seldom murder cases where the victims are already beyond reach or further harm. For me it is sex crimes. Rapists and pedophiles stoke a particular rage in me. Their victims walk among us with anxious glances searching out danger in innocuous places because survivors know that danager lurks there- it lurks everywhere.

The idea of being able to reassure someone that the person who harmed her/him is gone - truly gone- seems a worthy justification for flipping a switch and waiting. 

But then an execution goes horribly wrong, and what should be a “simple” execution begins to blur into something painful or akin to torture, and we didn’t sign on for that. We, as a nation, draw the line there.

I don’t know how I feel about the death penalty. The good liberal in me is supposed to oppose it. Hell, the good human in me should oppose it. And I guess a part of me is good because a part of me does oppose it. I oppose the idea that a person is only a single deed – good or bad- that people are a fixed point, that grace is only relevant to palatable crimes. But…oh but…it still pains me. 

There are other parts of me. Parts that have held the hand of friends and listened to the stories of rape and abuse – and that part of me chafes with each detail, with each survivor of visceral horror. 

Part of me wants retribution while part of me wants us to hold fast to our humanity and see the humanity in others, even when they seem to have forfeited it. I am reminded that hurt people hurt people and killing only adds more hurt into the world. Each day I struggle with my own notions of humanity, what it means, and how I will champion in in the world. Each day I struggle…