Our Innate Morality Demands Execution

Think of your child or grandchild or friend’s child. Next imagine that child with his or her skin flayed, flesh burned and limbs torn apart in a blinding flash. Consider the devastation such a death would wreak on the child’s loved ones, siblings and community.

Now think about the person who intentionally murdered that boy or girl. If you are not so angry that you want to kill that murderer, you are not being honest with yourself.

Yet it has become fashionable among people holding post-graduate degrees or those in the entertainment industry to oppose the death penalty. Some of this opposition is understandable. We have heard of innocent people sentenced to death, perhaps saved by DNA evidence, sometimes years later. But some commentators have extended this valid concern to the planned execution of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber who murdered 168 people, 19 of them children.

These death penalty opponents will say that our legal system should channel emotional desires for justice--vengeance--to a more “civilized” response, such as that of more “advanced” societies like Canada and Britain, which have renounced the death penalty.

But people will lose respect for the law if it drifts too far from their innate moral sense. According to recent Pew and Gallup polls, 75% of Americans believe McVeigh deserves the death penalty and two-thirds support the death penalty generally. The Constitution contemplates it, and the Bible, which continues to influence our morality, prescribes it. And while the law need not reflect Americans’ innate moral sense in all cases, there should be a compelling reason for dramatic divergences.

No such reason exists with respect to McVeigh.

Perhaps the death penalty should only be imposed where there is no doubt (as opposed to no reasonable doubt). It could also be further restricted to cases of multiple or mass murders planned in advance, where there has been effective assistance of competent counsel and there is no risk of racial bias. McVeigh’s case meets all of these criteria.

This leaves as the primary objection that the state should never kill, an untenable position. States kill in just wars and authorize police officers to fire in self-defense. The state also, inevitably, makes choices that result in death, such as the decision to raise the speed limit to 65 mph or build a dam.

It is true that the death penalty is administered not in the heat of war or a gun battle but after the opportunity for deliberation. But the procedural safeguards and opportunities for multiple judicial appeals may strengthen the case for the death penalty.

Other opponents contend that the death penalty does not deter crime; that is, it might not prevent future McVeighs. This is hard to prove either way, especially because the death penalty has not been imposed widely, swiftly and with certainty. But executing McVeigh need not make sense on a deterrence rationale to be right.

People make all sorts of choices that shorten their lives. The state has put people on notice that committing murder can lead to the death penalty. McVeigh has made his choice and should have to live and die with the consequences.

Much of the disquiet of elite opinion with the death penalty seems to stem from a reluctance to differentiate between right and wrong. A just society, however, must protect its citizens and vindicate their sense of justice. Perhaps paradoxically, executing McVeigh is the best way to affirm Americans’ deeply held belief that life is a gift from God and that those who coldbloodedly snuff it out should not continue to enjoy that gift.