Reflections on Capital Punishment: Brutal or Proportionate?

A view of the death chamber from the witness room at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, in Lucasville, Ohio, on Aug. 29, 2001. Mike Simons/Getty Images

Commentary

What is the usefulness, morality, and appropriateness of the death penalty, especially as a deterrent and a consequence of carrying out atrocious crimes?

Published last year, “The Boys of Biloxi” is John Grisham’s new vintage legal thriller novel that deals with an important and perennial issue: the use of the death penalty as a deterrent and a consequence of carrying out a heinous crime.

Set in Biloxi, a city in Mississippi, it follows the boyhood friendship of Hugh Malco, the son of the main mobster, and Keith Rudy, the son of the District Attorney, Jesse, whose ambition it is to clean up the city.

Although they had been local sporting heroes and comrades in their teens, they pursued different career paths in adulthood. Hugh embraces the life of a mobster who eventually becomes involved in the murder of Keith’s father.

The day before Hugh’s scheduled execution, readers expect that Keith will recommend clemency to the Governor.

Instead, he cannot bring himself to attend the execution of his former teenage friend.

“The jury said you deserve to die, Hugh, and I agreed then. I agree now. For a long time, I’ve dreamed of watching your execution, but I can’t do it.”

Hugh, accepting Keith’s decision, says: “So long, pal. I’ll see you on the other side.”

Exploited as Executions

So coming back to the real world, is there any role for capital punishment in our time?

The issue is again high on the agenda of the international community and human rights organisations because of the brutal executions of people convicted of protests against the Iranian theocratic government.

There, the death penalty is used as a means to deter people from participating in protests against the regime.

Critics of the regime note that “the authorities are using charges that carry the death penalty more liberally than they have before, widening the application of such laws to cover protesters.”

In the first half of 2022 alone, 251 executions were carried out in Iran. Thus far, there have been 113 executions in Iran this year.

Iranian demonstrators take to the streets of the capital Tehran during a protest for Mahsa Amini on Sept. 21, 2022, five days after the young woman died in custody while under arrest by the country's morality police. AFP via Getty Images

According to the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, China executes more people than all other countries combined.

It is estimated that at least 8,000 people were executed in China in 2022. This compares with 18 executions carried out in the United States in the same year.

The American philosopher, Hugo Adam Bedau, notes that the death penalty debate concentrates on the question of whether this punishment has a deterrent effect.

He argues that even if people unanimously agreed on the answer to this question, “this would not by itself settle the dispute over whether to keep, expand, reduce or abolish the death penalty.”

Bedau added that arguments “intended to recommend continuing or reforming current policy on the death penalty must include among its premises one or more normative propositions.”

His comments imply that discussion on the deterrent effect of the death penalty should also involve an examination of moral principles, some of which may act as constraints on the application of this punishment.

But other philosophers have argued that common sense suggests that the death penalty has a deterrent effect.

For example, James Fitzjames Stephen argues that capital punishment is an efficient deterrent because the proposition that it “deters men so effectually from committing crimes ... is one of those propositions which it is difficult to prove, simply because they are in themselves more obvious than any proof can make them.”

Life Imprisonment, Perhaps?

Is deterrence an appropriate penalty for Grisham’s main protagonist, Hugh Malco? Should his sentence have been commuted to life imprisonment?

This question could well receive a positive answer in view of Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which stipulates that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

A small group of demonstrators rally against the death penalty outside the U.S. Supreme Court building, where justices were hearing arguments in the federal government's bid to reinstate Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's death sentence in Washington, on Oct. 13, 2021. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

But Keith’s view is ambivalent because he cannot bring himself to attend the execution of his former teenage friend, but he does not propose to recommend clemency either because he regards the penalty as appropriate and proportionate to the crime.

In this context, international law scholar, Igor Primorac, indicates that if capital punishment were to be abolished, then murderers would be the only people whose punishment is disproportionate to the crime. For him, the demand to abolish the death penalty altogether “is actually a demand to give a privileged position to murderers as against all other offenders, big and small.”

One may well disagree with Primorac when he confidently argues that the death penalty is “the only punishment truly proportionate” to the crime of murder.

So readers of Grisham’s novel are left to ponder on whether the looming execution of Hugh has little to do with deterrence but is merely a matter of “revenge.”

The audience has not only been left entertained but readers are also made to think about important social issues for which there is no easy answer.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.