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Death by Legislation First Universalist Unitarian Church Wausau, Wisconsin July 9, 2006
Arthur Thexton Reading: Genesis 4
I have read Paul’s sermon from April 2, which is entitled “Capital Punishment: Accepting the Unacceptable” and found it not to be about capital punishment at all, but about the far more interesting and important topic of how to live in the face of evil. He discusses the case of Karla Fay Tucker, the murderer who repented and changed, but was executed anyway. Today, I want to talk about capital punishment when there is no such repentance, or change, and thus indirectly about our referendum in November, and about our religious and spiritual response to this public policy question.
When I was 10 or 12, I wanted to be an FBI agent. When I was a teenager and became more socially conscious, I wanted to be a lawyer and change the world. Those were the days when every night on the TV news we saw white police beating black civil rights demonstrators in the South, hosing them fire hoses, allowing their German Shepherds to bite them. We saw soldiers walking across fields in Vietnam, firing guns. And, we saw feature stories about a new way of living being tried out in San Francisco by people called hippies. I certainly wanted to join them.
Thinking back on all this, I wonder at how I took seriously the advice: “If you want better cops, be one.” But I did take it seriously, and while I wasn’t a cop very long, and wasn’t a better one, I did end up spending virtually all of my life since school in law enforcement. I was an assistant district attorney, a district attorney, and I’m still a prosecutor, though not doing criminal work. I don’t think I have any illusions about criminals: I’ve seen them on the street, I’ve seen them in jail, I’ve seen them in the courtroom and on the witness stand, and I’ve sent them to prison. I’m glad I did. I’m glad they are there, I don’t want them around in their present state of mind. I have stories of unspeakable cruelty, of destruction and greed. I have been there, and despite my liberal Democratic politics and my ACLU membership, I am under no illusions about the character or personalities of those who populate our jails and prisons.
But for whatever reason, maybe reading a book in my youth about the questions surrounding the Bruno Hauptmann case (for the younger set, he is the man convicted of kidnapping and murdering the Lindbergh baby, and executed; the Lindbergh is Charles Lindbergh, the first person to fly a plane across the Atlantic, in 1929), I have never favored the death penalty. There are only a few arguments available on this issue, and I was never impressed with the arguments for it. They are: it deters others, it prevents repeated murder, it saves money, and it is just. There is no convincing evidence that it does any of the first three, and while there are apparently some studies which might support those arguments, the evidence is, as lawyers say, clear satisfactory and convincing that those arguments, which are entirely secular in nature, simply aren’t true. It is the last argument, that it is just, which cannot be defeated by studies or statistics.
Likewise, the arguments against the death penalty are not numerous. The secular arguments are that it is unfairly applied (there are many variations on this theme), it is not possible to be certain that we do not make mistakes resulting in executing someone who is innocent or at least undeserving, and the non-secular argument is that it is wrong, or, put another way, contrary to our values. There is plenty of fact-based evidence to support the first two arguments, but the third is simply not susceptible of proof or disproof. So it is these two moral, ethical, religious, or spiritual arguments: that it is just, and that it is contrary to our values, which must ultimately contend for our support, and which call for a spiritual response.
And, because we are here in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, I shall mention that the Unitarian Universalist Association, our denomination, has passed four resolutions opposing all capitol punishment, in 1961, 66, 74, and 79, and another in 1989 which condemned the US Supreme Court’s decision permitting states to impose the death penalty on those who commit murder when they are 16 or 17, or who are mentally retarded. The Court has reversed course on the mentally retarded, and very recently also on the juveniles.
There is the argument used by all sides, who claim that religious text supports the position taken by the speaker. In most cases around here, this means that the Bible is cited. As religious liberals, we find those arguments to be interesting, informative, sometimes profound or persuasive, but not authoritative. We listen, we learn, we make up our own minds. So those arguments, couched as they are in the language of religion, are not, in my mind, necessarily religious. This is a call for obedience, not for growth.
I feel compelled to deal with this argument about closure, which assumes without any evidence or reasoned analysis that the family or victims of a murder cannot have “closure” while the murderer lives in prison. There is so much wrong with this argument that I hardly know how to begin: what is closure, and is it really desirable? What about those who never even know who it is who murdered their loved one because the police cannot solve the crime: are they doomed to a lifetime of non-closure? What is more closing for a family: the knowledge that the murderer has been caught and convicted, or the degree of punishment? What is the difference between closure and revenge? And what about those who are very clear in opposing the death penalty even though they themselves have lost close family members to murder: are they to be thought “unclosed” or worse: unloving or lacking in grief? This whole argument is, to my mind, another example of extremely shallow thinking.
The real issue here is the always difficult tension between just desserts on the one hand, and the various spiritual calls on the other. Mercy, for one. Mercy is a religious or spiritual value which calls to us. Now, I am not much interested in mercy for its benefits to the undeserving, although I am never quite sure who exactly is undeserving, in the abstract. In practice, this seems easier: Adolf Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, Radavan Karadic, Slobodan Milosovic, Timothy McVeigh, Saddam Hussein, any number of sexual predators, child molesters, and serial killers who seem to populate California and Florida with occasional forays into the midwest. Surely, we hear, our mercy should be reserved for those who “deserve” it, perhaps even for those who have “earned” it. Can’t we tell the difference? Don’t we know it when we see it, even if we can’t define it? And, the pro-mercy argument would respond, shouldn’t we extend mercy when it is least deserved, because isn’t that what grace and acknowledging our own imperfection is all about? This is a powerful argument for those with the discipline to master and overcome their emotions, and I admire them. I am not strong enough to join them, but I admire them.
A second spiritual call or reason for opposing the death penalty is that once we make a decision that we will use capital punishment, we have determined that it is acceptable to kill in the name of justice. Having said that and publicly broadcast that, as an official value of society, surely all who live in that society must, to some extent, internalize that value and the feelings that go with it. Once we all think that human life may be taken in the name of justice, it is easier, in my opinion, for individuals to think that they have the right to do so, outside the judicial process. Thus, even though it is illegal or immoral to kill in the name of justice outside the judicial framework, it will happen because of the effect that the law has as a teacher. There is no way to avoid this, except to establish as a public and legal value that we will not countenance killing in the name of justice, under any circumstances. I often say that I am opposed to the death penalty not because of what it does to the condemned prisoner, but because of what it does to us, the living innocent. It changes us, and for the worse. I find this to be a powerful and spiritual argument.
Next, we are called to grow in spirit. I am not opposed to capital punishment because the murderer does not deserve it. I begin by acknowledging that he, and it is usually a “he,” DOES deserve it in some sense, and that we feel this emotion powerfully, in our gut. But why does that translate into capital punishment? How does the fact that we all agree that he “deserves” the death penalty somehow give us the right to kill him? Isn’t it more likely that it is the very moment that we are all agreed that we should kill someone, when we should stop ourselves? It is when we are most sure about taking an irrevocable act that we should halt and start questioning!
Notwithstanding all the pop psychology we hear about trusting our gut, we cannot base our decisions on our emotions alone. We have to bring more to the table. The entire march of western religion, by which I mean the monotheistic and humanist faiths, has been away from responding in and with anger, and towards tempering one’s gut with some serious and sustained thought. Unitarian and Universalist approaches to religion have always emphasized reason and analysis, and building on the knowledge and thought of others who have gone before, without being bound by historical precedent. But more than that, UU approaches emphasize the importance of individual responsibility and accountability, individual decisionmaking. This is growth, and questioning our strongest feelings is growth in spirit.
Fundamentally, responding to evil is (after self-protection) not about him, it’s about me. How I respond to great evil, the murder of a family member or dear friend, is not about the murderer, it’s about me, the survivor, the grieving victim. What kind of person do I choose to be? How will I get through this grief, and live life? Will it be by saying that justice is more death? Do I really believe that Timothy McVeigh (or Jeffrey Dahmer or the others I named) has inherent worth and dignity, and is a part of the interdependent web, even in prison for life without parole? I do, or I aspire to. I don’t know what his worth is, nor do I understand how dignity may be a part of him, but I am prepared to take it on faith that it is there. I know that if I call for his death, it is I who have lowered myself to his level. I don’t want to be there. I want to be, I can be, I will be better than Timothy McVeigh.
And, although these are my religious responses, they are not the only ones. For example, it is a legitimate and important religious response to say that we must not impose a death penalty because every person can change and it is our religious duty to provide the opportunity for this to occur: by refusing to end life and instead by insisting that it be lived, however circumscribed, so that the murderer may think and reflect. Whether there is repentance or change is not the point: our job is to provide that opportunity, for all, because we cannot predict who will be able to take advantage of it. Who are we to say that another human being will never repent, in 10 or 30 years? This is a powerful argument, and again, not one which can be proved or disproved by social science statistics. But it is not my response, because it is not rooted in my theology.
So it’s not about them. My friends, it’s surely not about them. It’s about me, and who I want to be; it’s about us, and who we want to be, what example we will set, how we will look at ourselves in the mirror, what values will we stand for in law and in fact, and teach our children. That is why I am opposed to the death penalty.
So let us grieve with those whose loss we hope we will never fully understand or have to bear. Let us sit shiva with them, stand with them, comfort them, bring them casseroles and light candles for them. But let us not call for revenge, misusing the name of justice. Let us do better, and allow others to see our example, however few we might be. |