Perhaps I should have commented earlier on the February 21 New Hampshire state senate decision to table for further review a bill to amend the state's capital punishment laws (RSA 630:1). But the bill, SB 334, was, as reported, sufficiently vague enough to merit reconsideration. Hence, I deemed the issue rather unimportant, at least for now.

But I did find a Feb. 18 Keene Sentinel editorial on the matter of the death penalty, reprinted in the Nashua Telegraph (see here), rather curious, not so much for what it represented, namely, opposition to the death penalty for humane and economic reasons, but for what it ignored. For what it ignored is astonishing, and is indicative of the sort of moral blindness that occurs when people begin to talk about tough issues. And what is it that the Sentinel editorialist cannot see? Simple: He can't see that he supports executions, though only slower ones than hangings, electrocutions or lethal injections.

Here's what the editorialist wrote:

"Today, the idea of the state strapping people down and killing them over in Concord strikes some people as not altogether civilized. How would we explain it to the kids? The eye-for-an-eye justification may make superficial sense, although the state is supposed to behave better than violent criminals. Think of the moral dimension, the fact that many killers are deranged to begin with and the frightful string of cases in other states where innocent people have been convicted.

"Then, because so many mistakes are made, there is the cost. If Gov. Lynch wants to make New Hampshire hospitable to executions once again, he may have to start looking for donations. What little state tax money there is could probably be put to better use. New Hampshire is running a budget deficit, and it costs a lot more to prosecute and defend capital-punishment cases than it does to lock people up under the state's tough life-without-parole statute."[emphasis mine]

Surely we all see the problem here, and it is not an economic one. Emblematic as the editorial is, bearing many of the iconic moral ideals of anti-death penalty activists, it nevertheless does not represent a higher, or more civil, moral sensibility. Why? Because it merely advocates for death over a long period of time: this "more moral" stance is nothing more than choosing to kill the guilty by imprisonment. For that is what the writer is advocating when he mentions the "state's tough life-without-parole statute," and he submits it as some sort of proof of moral superiority.

But, pray tell, how are parents supposed to explain to their tender children the civility of putting "bad people" in cages until they die? How is that "tough statute" an improvement over a swifter means of execution? Is New Hampshire morally superior to Texas, for example, because the Granite State executes its prisoners slowly?

Indeed, one should ask whether the editorialist believes death by lethal imprisonment is still too swift for his moral convictions. Is it?

All this I submit to readers NOT because I support swift executions of those guilty of capital murder. I don't. My point is that the practice of death by terminal imprisonment is morally indistinguishable from death by terminal hanging: the state is killing its worst criminals. Supporters of swift execution are no better or worse than the seemingly more civil writer at the Keene Sentinel. Swift or slow, executions can always be perceived as barbaric. But the fact remains that the barbarism is a response to someone else's self-initiated barbarism. The state is not killing people willy-nilly, in a fit of drunken or jealous rage. Capital punishment is a sad response to a sadder reality. It is like a surgeon amputating a gangrenous limb: his act is barbaric, but it is a life-saving barbarism that comes in response to something that is not at all life-saving, the infectious bacteria that care for nothing but themselves.

So where do we arrive in all of this? Nowhere, really, except perhaps in a place of moral humility. Of course, that's a good place. There is no 'civil' or 'morally superior' position one can take in the wake of the violent incivilities perpetrated on the innocent we read about every day.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008