No freedom in death

Ours is a nation, we like to tell ourselves, based on the supremacy of the rights of the individual over those of society.

Nowhere is this premise more solidly repudiated than in the continuing practice of the death penalty.

To be sure, outside of the death penalty, our judicial system is designed, and practices, to ensure the rights of the accused and convicted to a degree far beyond what any other nation promises.

Those accused of even the most heinous crimes are guaranteed a quick and speedy trial, legal representation, the right to appeal any verdict, and safe keeping while incarcerated.

Yet all of this protection, again based on the implied supremacy of the individual, is nothing as long as we as a society claim to right to kill those we judge guilty.

It matters not for what crimes we kill; the crux of the issue is that we reserve the right to take the life of any citizen.

The above may sound shocking. Certainly, you may ask, I do not mean that anyone, even innocents, can be executed.

But that is precisely what I mean, for our legal system, as even its most ardent crusaders will readily admit, is based not on finding truth, but on blindly administering justice.

And justice is defined to mean only that everyone receives a fair trial, which is further defined to mean that rich and poor, man and woman, black and white, are treated the same.

It has nothing to do with truth.

All of which brings us to the point that even if a man freely admits to brutally killing dozens of others for no reason beyond boredom or anger, society cannot take his life without implicitly stating that it reserves the right to take the life of all others convicted of the same crime.

Or any crime, for that matter, as the existence of the death penalty is not dependant on the concurrent existence of violent crime, but only on society's assertion that it has the right to kill.

The above argument leads to the conclusion that, notwithstanding all of the protections guaranteed those accused of crime, society reserves the right to kill each and every one of us.

We have all heard the arguments of those who favor executions of murderers. First, it is argued that the death penalty discourages others from committing similar acts. There has yet to be a respected study based on the scientific method to uphold this theory, though. Indeed, as Camus pointed out in his 1957 essay, "Reflections on the Guillotine," such a theory is even less valid in a system where executions take place behind the sterile gray walls of prison, witnessed by relatively few.

An anonymous, invisible death, especially in a society such as ours where thousands die daily on television entertainment programs, is likely to have no deterrent value on those who would murder.

The second argument favored by those who champion the death penalty is that those who take the lives of others knowingly give up their own claim to a right to live.

I am willing to grant this argument, because it is wholly incidental to the point at hand. Even if a man murders, and in so doing knowingly, consciously forfeits claim to his own life, society still cannot take that life without, again, claiming the right to take the lives of each of us.

Thus a democratic society, based as it is on rule of law, may only execute after due process of law, which must be administered evenly, with regard to process rather than truth.

Ours would be a far more just society were it to admit that it has no right to take any life, and instead committed itself to protecting the lives of all.

Even those standing accused of the most heinous crimes.