Soul-Searching on an Incarnation of Evil

For people who want to put a face on evil, was that it in Thursday’s newspaper?

Was it convicted cop killer Hung Thanh Mai, shackled and in jailhouse garb and then caught by the camera as he turned to look at the family of the man he killed? The killer who was overheard saying to them, “I’d do it again”?

Mai is 29 and is in court this week to find out if he’ll get the death penalty for killing CHP Officer Don Burt in 1996.

This being Orange County and given the nature of Mai’s crime, his fate is sealed.

And even though I’ve written many times before in opposition to the death penalty, I can’t say there isn’t some part of me that wouldn’t say, “Hey, tough luck” if Mai were executed next week.

But it won’t be next week. It’ll be, what, 10, 15 years? Will he still be evil then? Maybe, maybe not. The evil of his crime won’t have changed, but what about the man himself?

So, I’m torn.

Why would part of me not be outraged if Mai were executed in a “timely” fashion while another part of me--by far the larger--thinks it’s pointless to execute someone with a sedative 15 years after the fact?

Seeking enlightenment, I went to a rabbi.

Mark S. Miller of Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach has lectured on the death penalty and has an abiding interest in it. Historic Jewish tradition sees the death penalty not as punishment but as revenge, Miller says, noting that the Torah even describes four different methods of capital punishment.

However, centuries of rabbinical interpretation weigh against the death penalty, Miller says. Rabbis historically see the Torah’s words as expressions of God and society’s outrage over certain crimes and to warn potential criminals of the gravity of their acts--but not that they dictate that societies should carry out executions.

“In an ideal world, there should be swift and prompt punishment of murderers,” Miller says. “We should remove them permanently from society. Do not release them from prison. But don’t eliminate them.”

I tell Miller of my occasional waffling, and he understands perfectly.

“When I talk to people about capital punishment,” he says, “I always say that I’m going to present an ivory-tower, academic discourse and that I can do that objectively and think of it in the third-person and am removed from it. But I always say I do not know how I’d feel if my own ox were gored, if, God forbid, something happened to someone in my family.”

That’s what the Mais of the world do to me. I reject the death penalty as wrong and unjust, but then someone like Mai comes along, and I’m tempted to turn a cold shoulder.

What do you see, I ask Miller, when a killer taunts his victim’s family?

“When you said that, my first thought was that I don’t think murderers are nice guys,” he says. “That he turned around and taunted and smirked is absolutely reprehensible, but no more reprehensible than what he did.”

And while conceding for a moment that some recess of his psyche might want revenge against a truly evil person, Miller quickly adds, “but I do not want to descend to the level of the murderer.”

“My context is the Holocaust. I’m often asked why people didn’t pick up guns or knives, as if they were lying around, and turn on their tormentors. They were facing certain death. Why not take one with them? What did they have to lose?

“To me, you’ve got your soul to lose. Not literally, but we’re taught a certain way to live. And especially in their last moments of the Holocaust, I don’t think it was the better part of wisdom to descend to the level of the murderer when you’re taught all your life by family, God and society to walk a higher road.”

Before we finish, Miller returns to his earlier point that his is a clinical view. He doesn’t know how he’d react if a Hung Thanh Mai taunted him after killing a loved one.

“When push comes to shove,” Miller says, “no one should be so sure of themselves in any given situation. Unless and until you find yourself face-to-face with reality.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.