Chink Appears In Armour Against Death Penalty
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 13, 2007
Following the barbaric execution of Saddam Hussein, Italy this week called for a worldwide moratorium on capital punishment. The campaign will draw immediate support in Europe, where capital punishment is no longer practised, but will be less warmly received in the United States, still prominent on the list of countries that execute their own citizens.
More than 90 per cent of the world's executions are carried out by just three countries: China (top of the list by a country mile), Iran and Saudi Arabia. Australia's last execution was in 1967, when Ronald Ryan was hanged in Pentridge prison in Melbourne, following a long and bitter public debate about capital punishment and an all-night vigil outside the prison by citizens scarcely able to believe that a society like ours was still capable of such brutality.It couldn't happen again, could it? We could never, surely, reopen that debate and give fresh consideration to reintroducing the death penalty here, could we? No crime could be so monstrous, no criminal so vile, that we would compromise our principles on this issue, would we? Our Prime Minister and Foreign Minister are both firmly opposed to capital punishment, though there are occasional signs that their position is not resolute. John Howard once remarked that he thought "anyone" would support the execution of Osama bin Laden if he were ever brought to justice, and Australia is on record as saying it would not object to the execution of those behind the Bali bombings. These are worrying chinks in the armour of our official position. Even in the case of Saddam, the Prime Minister has appeared to praise the process that led to his death sentence, though legal opinion around the world has condemned the trial as shoddy, to say the least, and the rush to execution as unseemly - especially for a man who should have faced far more serious charges than the one that brought him undone. There are few, if any, moral questions on which we all agree, and capital punishment is a classic divider of public opinion. There hasn't been a recent poll on the subject here, but I'd be prepared to bet there's still a sizeable minority of Australians, panting in the shadows, who would love to pick a gloves-off fight with the wimps and bleeding hearts - I count myself among the latter - who regard unequivocal opposition to the death penalty as one of the most reliable markers of a civilised society. As with so many moral issues, our passion on this subject creates a fog that blinds us to each other's points of view, leaving us to grope towards a flickering, uncertain light we each believe to be the light of reason. But moral convictions, no matter how earnest, need a more solid basis than mere prejudice. Those who favour the death penalty are generally driven by two motivations. The first is revenge - a hot, primitive urge that wells up in all of us under sufficient provocation. If we yield to it, we plunge ourselves into mindless moral darkness where reflexive responses are all that count. He hit me; I'll hit him. She maligned me; I'll malign her. Revenge beckons with the ultimate perversion of the golden rule: "Treat others the way they treat you." The second motivation seems cooler and more balanced - perfectly balanced, in fact: "The punishment fits the crime." Seductive, but false: although the punishment appears to fit the crime, it actually matches the crime in its murderous, clanging disregard for human life. We abhor killing, so we kill. Huh?We don't steal from thieves as a way of punishing them. We don't crash cars into the cars of reckless drivers. We don't con con men. We don't rape rapists. Why should we want to kill killers? The punishment fits the crime when its severity matches the severity of the crime, not when it reproduces the crime. The goal of severe punishment is to deprive criminals of their freedom, sometimes for life, and to make society safer for the rest of us. "The world is rid of Saddam Hussein," cried thousands of people celebrating his execution. But the world was already rid of him from the moment he was captured and imprisoned. Who needed his blood as well?The arguments against capital punishment are well-worn, but some are easy to overlook. When a society authorises the killing of any of its citizens, it declares a diminished value on human life. The poet John Donne put it well: "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."The execution of a criminal eliminates forever the possibility of remorse, redemption, restitution and forgiveness. The final, bleak abandonment of those possibilities diminishes us all.Deciding that the death penalty is wrong for us but right for others is no solution. We are prepared to speak up for other human rights; why not this one? If the arguments against the death penalty are sufficiently compelling for us, and all of Europe, to have abolished it, shouldn't we be more outspoken about it? So far, we haven't heard a peep of support forthe Italian initiative from any of our leaders, though this would be an emblematic, life-affirming opportunity to nail Australia's fluttering banner to an international mast.
© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald