Moral and nonmoral options in capital punishment

Perhaps Sen. Manny Pacquiao, who has filed a bill in the Senate for the restoration of capital punishment in the country, is thinking that anyone who committed a heinous act is beyond reform. For this reason, therefore, the death penalty must be meted out as a form of retribution for a brutal crime. The right to life is not absolute, advocates for capital punishment argue; and so, any hardened criminal who has committed murder or rape deserves to be given the harshest form of punishment that is proportional to the evil act.

Proponents say that the degree of the criminal offense is the basis of the state’s moral and legal right, and consequent duty to implement capital punishment. Igor Primoratz avers in his essay, “A life for a life,” that it is in the interest of justice that the offense and the punishment “ought to be proportionate.” Capital punishment is not the murder of a criminal, according to Primoratz, if we take murder to mean “the wrongful taking of another person’s life.”

From the point of view of the victim, the principle of “an eye for an eye” is understandably the stronger position. The suffering of the victim is beyond measure. Any innocent life that is lost to a barbaric crime is beyond redemption. This argument suggests that the amount of suffering of the criminal then must be equal to the crime that he or she has committed. By committing murder, it can be said that the criminal has forfeited the right to life. The gravity of the criminal offense thus deserves an equally brutal punishment. A prison sentence, however long, is seen as not severe enough as a form of retribution for a brutal crime.

The death penalty, according to Ernest Van den Haag, will deter potential murderers. He argues further that “though we have no proof of the positive deterrence of the penalty, we also have no proof of the zero or negative effectiveness.” As a matter of policy, he says, capital punishment intends to save innocent lives. This position is called the common-sense argument. For him, we cannot risk the lives of those future victims “for the sake of sparing convicted murderers.”

Louis Pojman explains that the death penalty as deterrence has some utilitarian value. He clarifies that there are many social variables that must be considered. One has to look into demographic patterns, including economic status, education, and culture. His position is that since death is what people most fear, then capital punishment is “a far more superior deterrent than lifetime imprisonment.” When criminals are locked up in prison, given their resources or influence, they can still plan for their future freedom. But if a crime is punished with death, then any potential criminal will have something to fear the most.

But the bigger issue that proponents of the death penalty need to confront is that judicial errors are an undeniable reality in this country. For this reason, any miscarriage of justice is simply another instance of the unequal position of people in our society. Once innocent individuals are executed, there is no chance of rectifying the mistake. They can no longer be exonerated if later they are found to be  innocent.

Proportionality is not the equivalent of equality. Poor people who are accused of capital offenses do not have the means to afford the services of a brilliant lawyer. The death penalty in the United States, for instance, according to Erik Eckholm, is tied to race. Bias against persons of color exists, and it is for this reason that Justice Harry A. Blackmun opposed capital punishment. Eckholm cites data from Washington that race “was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty.” However, Eckholm would like to believe that the issue is, not race, but “the integrity of the system.”

We need to ask an important critical question: Does the killing of a criminal make us more civilized as a people? Our dangerous tendency to divide human society into just two lenses—the victim’s and the criminal’s—means that there is no longer a moral compass that creates the balance which justice requires. While the death penalty eliminates the criminal, it does not, however, correct the root cause of our fundamental problems. The fact of the matter is that the hanging of a criminal will not resurrect from the dead the innocent victim of a crime.

We all aspire for a just, humane and democratic society. The protection of human life is in the supreme interest not only of the state but of everyone. Yet, we also have to make sure that our institutions, including our judicial system, in recognizing the value of the dignity of every Filipino, will favor no one. In the absence of a trustworthy judicial system, capital punishment may prove to be unacceptable from a moral end.

Christopher Ryan Maboloc is assistant professor of philosophy at Ateneo de Davao University and the author of “Ethics and Human Dignity.” He holds a master’s degree in applied ethics from Linkoping University in Sweden.