This post isn’t about the propriety of the death penalty so much as it is about the dangers and profound crassness of utilitarian philosophy. Peter Singer has stated that if he was convinced of a utilitarian benefit to society from the death penalty, he would support it. From “Ethics Matter: A Conversation With Peter Singer:”
QUESTION: Is there any possible scenario that you could imagine sanctioning the death penalty?
PETER SINGER: Is there any possible scenario where I could imagine? Look, if somebody came up with convincing evidence that the death penalty was a uniquely effective deterrent—let’s say that for every murderer who was executed, there would be ten fewer murders—then, as a utilitarian, I would have to accept the death penalty. In fact, if the evidence was clear-cut enough and sound enough, even if it was only for every person executed, there were two fewer murderers or one and a half fewer murderers, I guess I would accept it. But as I read it, there just isn’t any such evidence. The evidence, if anything, seems to suggest the other way. Certainly, in the United States, the states that do not have the death penalty have lower murder rates than the states that do have the death penalty. The whole of the European Union, none of those states have the death penalty; they all have lower murder rates than the United States. So the evidence seems to me to be contrary to what I was suggesting.
And, certainly, I don’t see other justifications for the death penalty. I don’t see the point of punishment as being retribution. I think that is something that is—well, to my mind it’s a little primitive really, the idea that somehow you take retribution by taking a life for a life. You can see why, in earlier societies, that was a way of responding to crime. But I would think that we understand a little bit more about the causes of crime, and understand a little bit more about what is really likely to be the best way to respond to it, in terms of having a moral, compassionate, and humane society. The death penalty doesn’t seem to be it.
QUESTIONER: What about genocide?
PETER SINGER: I don’t really see that genocide is any different in that sense. Certainly, you may want to lock people away who are guilty of those horrible crimes, but I don’t really see a need to put them to death. Again, in Europe we have, of course, now trials relating to genocide in former Yugoslavia. But those people are not being put to death when convicted of those crimes. Nobody there is really clamoring for blood for the blood that has been shed.
May want to lock people away???
Looking at the death penalty in such a removed manner comes from shedding human exceptionalism. Singer talks about a moral and compassionate society, but bases his views on the DP by applying cold utilitarian outcomes. And it strikes me that if one would say OKAY to the death penalty if two fewer murders resulted per execution–and I think some studies have actually shown a deterrent value–then what else should we judge in this way? I mean, if that is our focus, why not kill convicted murderers for their organs since that will save more lives of the innocent than it takes from the guilty? And what if “retribution” actually made the lives of the devastated loved ones more bearable, worth living, and fulfilling with the execution, but would leave them with never-ending emotional devastation without it–as sometimes happens–what then? Based on a pure utilitarian calculation, it could justify execution. Indeed, with regard to utilitarianism, “primitive” and “compassion” are irrelevant.
Compare Singer’s views–which theoretically could boil down to 1.00000001 fewer murders for one application of the death penalty–to that of the focused and impressive death penalty opponent, Sr. Helen Prejean, of Dead Man Walking fame. I watched her give a rousing speech last month when we appeared at the same event, in which she cried out, “What about the [human] dignity of the guilty?” It was a powerful question, one which I am still pondering. And she certainly never argues as if the suffering of the victims’ loved ones doesn’t matter, a crucial matter in this issue that Singer didn’t mention directly in his answer. To the contrary, in fact. The victims are as much a part of her ministry as the guilty.
Mere incarceration for genocide isn’t justice. Nor for the rape/murder of a child, so let’s not pretend that it is. This doesn’t mean we should have a death penalty, of course, but I think the focus of the arguments over this controversial issue should be about how to best value the importance of human life in the criminal justice context–I think both sides have valid arguments on that score–to which should also be added (and this isn’t a complete list) the place for mercy in such cases, the emotional benefits of retribution to the victims and society, the dangers of unleashing blood lust vengence if the state doesn’t adequately punish, yes, deterrent value, if any, and the risks of executing an innocent person.
But cold blooded utilitarian bean counting as the apparent sole criterion? No. That’s not only crass, but I think it denigrates the fundamental import of human life, human death, and the human craving for justice after suffering catastrophic harm.
October 30th, 2011 | 4:16 am
Of course human exceptionalism is nonsense, it’s just a discrimination based on some badly defined category, usually a thin veil used to disguise religious beliefs under a façade of scientific acceptability. It’s the same old naturalistic fallacy again.
October 30th, 2011 | 1:46 pm
I agree with you that Singer’s hypothetical justification is a bad one. On that basis we could also justify executing innocent people under imaginable circumstances.
I disagree with Sr. Prejean that the death penalty does not respect the human dignity of the guilty party sentenced to the death penalty. On the contrary, we respect his status as a human being responsible for and hence punishable for his own actions, which included the heinous taking of another human life. That is why we execute him for that supposedly outdated reason Singer sneers at–namely, because he deserves it. Not simply for some utilitarian reason, as if he were an animal and not blame-able. That _is_ respecting the criminal’s human dignity. I realize you didn’t want to get into that in detail, but I thought her comment, though impassioned, was misguided and wanted to address it briefly.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
October 30th, 2011 at 5:09 pm
The point is that is where the discussion belongs. not a crass utilitarian equation so that if one execution led to 1.5 fewer murders, we should have the death penalty. That leads to very dark places.
Lydia Reply:
October 30th, 2011 at 7:55 pm
@Wesley J. Smith, I think I see your point: If Sr. Prejean said what she said and I said what I just said in response, at least we’re having a conversation on a humane and appropriate level. We’re talking about the kinds of things we should be talking about. Singer is not.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
October 30th, 2011 at 8:14 pm
Precisely.
October 30th, 2011 | 9:34 pm
I’d like to see capital punishment go away, but every time I think that’s a good idea a Tim McVeigh or Ted Bundy comes along who clearly deserves to be permanently removed from human society. It’s not so much how many they killed, as Singer might have it, to me it’s why they killed — for thrills in Bundy’s case, to make a political statement in McVeigh’s.
But Singer also misses the point about the problem with our current system of capital punishment, which is the process used to decide when it is utilized. The standards vary so widely from state to state as to make death by capital punishment almost a matter of geographical accident. And do NOT get me started on the racial disparities.
October 31st, 2011 | 6:10 am
Mr Smith, do you think some action is good because it has good consequences or that some consequence is good because it results from good actions? If you have independent criteria for both, how do you resolve the conflicts? accept that an action is good even if you know it will have bad results?
And what is this Human Exceptionalism? did you invent it? looking for it I find only your articles or pages pointing to your articles and books, mostly from religious websites.
Thanks
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
October 31st, 2011 at 9:14 am
Ron. Search here and read my book A Rat is A Pig is a Dog is a Boy. I am trying to popularize the term, don’t think I coined it. There are many seeking to undermine it, which is alarming as most people take it as a self evident truth. In the last chapter of a RAT, I quote philosophers etc., you can read them for deeper explorations.
padraig Reply:
October 31st, 2011 at 3:32 pm
@Ron, to quote one of my favorite authors, Robert Heinlein, “Does the end justify the means? It had damn well better!”
So generally it’s best to judge the “goodness” of an action by the “goodness” of its results. Unfortunately it’s not always that simple. Well planned and executed actions can have disastrous results. (Ask any poker player.) And then there’s the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Let’s just say you’ve picked an area that is rich with opportunities for discussion.
November 1st, 2011 | 5:12 am
@padraig: in a world of uncertain and incomplete information I think it makes sense not to blame those that acted in the best possible way, but caused unforeseeable bad consequences. But as a moral theory goes I think we should aim at the best possible consequences.
If we agree that saving innocent lives is good, then we should agree that 10 dead innocents is better than 1000 dead innocents. It’s a terrible calculation, but I don’t see how we can deal with the real world otherwise.
Attacks on consequentialism are usually an attack on “narrow” consequentialism: we should of course consider the broad and long term consequences, which are very hard to evaluate with any degree with reliability. But then that would be a disagreement about what the consequences are, not about the idea that we should judge looking at the consequences.
For example I’m not sure people would like to live in a world where convicted criminals are killed to sell their organs. The broad consequences of such a policy would probably be terrible. And so it seems a cheap attack to consequentialism. You can always come up with particular scenarios were the consequences justify some terrible action, but those scenarios might not be realistic at all. That’s why Singer says “if somebody came up with convincing evidence”.
@Wesley: I’ll look up this human exceptionalism. I would say that it matches common sense, but then I’m not really convinced that it can be based on solid ground. Do you dislike consequentialism in general, or just utilitarianism (e.g. saying that we cannot aggregate different preferences)?
padraig Reply:
November 1st, 2011 at 10:21 am
@Ron, ” in a world of uncertain and incomplete information I think it makes sense not to blame those that acted in the best possible way, but caused unforeseeable bad consequences.”
Excellent point. Congratulations, you have absolutely no future in politics. ;)
November 1st, 2011 | 11:04 am
I agree with Helen Prejean and disagree with Lydia. The death penalty entails the taking of human life, and hence breaks the sixth commandment. Moreover, the right of the state to take human life can be used as justification for the extension of this right beyond the guilty. If the state the the right to kill guilty people because that provides some sort of ambiguous social benefit, then why can’t it be argued tht the government has the right to kill innocent people whose deaths are regarded as justified? I see what you’re saying, Lydia, but holding people accountable for their actions can just as easily be accomplished by locking them up in solitary confinement.
I continue to be shocked that Peter Singer is regarded as SUCH a great mind. I think that if someone could find a utilitarian reason for castrating sheep and using their gonads as Halloween decorations, he would support that, too. Oh wait-I forgot-Singer supports the dignity of all animals, just not all human beings. My bad.
November 1st, 2011 | 12:05 pm
@padraig: luckily I don’t have any past or any present in politics, and I don’t care about one.
Still I think my point is valid: in the public arena the discussion would try to determine if the outcome was really unforeseeable, which is a really interesting question, but blaming somebody for truly unforeseeable consequences makes no sense.
November 1st, 2011 | 6:36 pm
My understanding is that China executes people SPECIFICALLY to supply their transplant organ market. Larry Niven wrote a series of science fiction novels in which he anticipated a world in which the demand for transplant organs drove governments to legislate the death penalty for an ever descending series of felonies, in order to meet the demand of voters for life-giving organs.
We should remember that human life is taken as a legal act in a number of circumstances outside the judgment of guilt and execution of a penalty in court proceedings. First of all, any citizen is allowed to take the life of another person if he is acting in self-defense. The law judges that, between the intentional killer and the innocent person who acts only from fear and necessity, it prefers the latter.
Second, the law permits police to kill persons who are actively committing deadly crimes (such as holding someone’s life hostage, or armed robbery), or who try to escape after committing such a crime. Escaping felons have a clear tendency to take the lives of others to effect their escape, so the law is biased in favor of police killing such fleeing persons, well before any formal adjudication of guilt.
Third, the law allows killing in the context of war, such as the assault on Osama bin Laden or the firing of a missile at Awlaki. This same principle extends to allowing the shooting down of a commercial passenger plane carrying innocent persons, to prevent the death of additional people on the ground.
So even if you ban execution as a form of punishment pronounced in court, there will still be killing of criminals, and enemies of society, and without any of the deliberation and debate that accompanies a trial. To me, if it is lawful and moral to take human life in these other circumstances, there should be a lawful means to do so within the deliberate process of criminal trial. One reason is that there is a practical effect: A ban on all formal executions will inform police that, if they are facing a depraved killer, the only way to absolutely ensure the killer’s execution is to carry it out on the spot. That temptation will be especially high if the killer has already been convicted of murder, and has escaped custody, perhaps by killing a guard.
Ted Bundy twice escaped from police custody in Colorado while awaiting trial on murder, the second time making it to Florida, where he killed several more young women before being recaptured. Do you think one of the deputies who caught him after his first escape wished he had killed Bundy during the pursuit, and saved the lives of those women?
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