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D.C. Sniper Should Not Be Executed
But Muhammad will die on Nov. 10 by lethal injection. He will be executed under the laws of the state of Virginia. No one will save him. Not the U.S. Supreme Court. Not Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine. Not President Obama. Each could do so but won't.
I understand why families of Muhammad's victims want him to die: He terrorized a city, he ruined lives and he destroyed futures. I was living in Washington, D.C., at the time, and I can still recall my own fear - for myself, my family and my friends - that there was a random shooter on the loose.
But the justified anger of the victims' kin does not justify state-sponsored killing.
Capital punishment is morally wrong and irrational.
A recent report, entitled "Smart on Crime" and published by the Death Penalty Information Center, exposes many of the basic problems with the death penalty.
First of all, it is not a deterrent.
According to "Smart on Crime," the nation's police chiefs rank the capital punishment last in reducing violent crime. Criminologists cited in the same report conclude that the death penalty does not effectively reduce murders in the United States. In fact, 88 percent of the nation's top criminologists "do not believe that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide," the report says. As proof, since the year 2000, executions have declined 60 percent in the United States but the murder rate has also gone down, not up, as proponents of the death penalty would predict.
Second, the death penalty is arbitrarily applied. Back in 2005, the Associated Press studied capital cases in Ohio over a two-decade period. It found that in one county, only 8 percent of those charged with a capital crime got a death sentence, whereas in another county, the rate was more than five times higher.
Third, there is a pronounced racial bias. If you murdered a white person in Ohio, you were twice as likely to be sentenced to death than if you killed a black person, the AP study found.
Another major problem with the death penalty is the cost. For example, California, which was recently borderline insolvent, spends $137 million per year on its capital punishment program; yet, no one has been executed there in three and a half years. Other states report similar cost issues.
Then there is gnawing question of innocence. How can we ever be sure that the person who is executed is not innocent? Have we already put people to death who did not do the crime?
Recently, the case of Cameron Todd Willingham again called our entire state-sponsored machinery of death into question. Willingham, executed in February 2004, was convicted of killing his own children by arson. However, the evidence used to convict him of deliberately setting the fire that killed his daughters has been proven to be not sustainable. In other words, Willingham did not set the fire that killed his daughters but was put to death for that very act.
Even if we are confident that the person is guilty, however, as in the case of John Allen Muhammad, capital punishment is still wrong.
It is premeditated murder, and that's immoral whether an individual is doing the deed or the state is.
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17 Comments so far
Show AllI too remember the sheer panic of the random DC sniper shootings. Even here in Ohio, far from the DC area, one felt queasy while pumping gas.
But at the same time, I recall feeling just as revolted (if not considerably more) by the thought of tens of thousands of innocent human beings in Iraq who were going to be bombed out of existence by the murderous instruments of state terror inflicted upon them by a soulless gang, again operating out of DC.
The fear of being atomized, entire families at a time, by lethal bombs dropped from the sky, I would contend- is every bit as terrorizing as what the DC sniper aroused in so many of us commuters in this country. And, looking back, this thousand-fold greater sniper attack went on for years, and none of the perpetrators has been brought to justice, even remotely. The other day, I watched in horror as Donald Rumsfeld, one of the chief mega-snipers in the state terror operation, was being feted in a black-tie gathering- on C-SPAN no less.
I agree with the author of this article about the sheer medieval barbarity of the death penalty. Such a savage practice should not be condoned by any civilized human society. The practice is morally abhorrent not only because it is fraught with serious flaws, including the many instances where an innocent is murdered by the state- but simply because a singular act of killing (no matter how brutal) cannot be made right by a collective, organized killing by a larger entity- the state. Nothing justifies this- no matter how emotionally charged people get. Even as an avowed pacifist, however, I would confess that the closest I get to finding myself wishing such punishment upon anyone- is when I consider the willful practitioners of genocide and mass-murder using statecraft. If the world made an attempt at least to bring such gruesome criminals to justice, regardless of their national origin- it will have put in place a far greater instrument of justice than the inherently immoral practice of death penalty imposed on individuals whose crimes (if proven) are petty by comparison.
It was a CIA conspiracy (just like 9-11, JFK, and the Moon landings), Bush and Cheney were behind it along with the rest of the republicans. Muhammad is the fall guy.
I'm only a zillion days late to respond, but I totally agree with you.
Yeah, yeah, killing the murderer doesn't unkill his victims but come on... This is the clearest open-shut case for a state execution ever. I'm not for extending any kind of mercy to this guy. I'm from DC, btw.
It's not about extending "mercy". It is about joining the civilized world. European and most Latin American countries will not extradite a fugutive to the US unless there is a guarantee that the death penalty won't be imposed.
Even in India, the death penalty is on the books but never used. They had to impose a permanent stay on even the execution of a Mohammad Afzal, the leader of a 2001 deadly attack on the Indian Parliament, due to anti-death penalty sentiment among the public.
It's an open and shut case, of course this man should not be executed by the state. Does anyone one else see the contradiction of allowing the murderous state that has directly or indirectly butchered 1 million + people in the middle east and southeast Asia to administer "justice?" The real mass murders (Bush, Blair, just about every US president), are incapable of adminstering "justice." If you understand the inherent race and class bias of the death penalty, the sheer barbarity and the its arbitrary nature yet still support it; you're no better than spectators of lynchings in the old-south.
Respect to the author for a) not forgetting the obvious flaw in state executions and b) for taking the challenge of bringing up the topic with such a hated criminal.
I can't think of any justification for state executions that can't accurately be rephrased as "I want. . ."
Let's not confuse morality and egotism.
You have to be clear on why you do or don't support the death penalty.
I don't support the death penalty because it is barbaric and counter to basic principles of a fair, just and compassionate society.
Does that mean that I don't want that killer dead? No. But it doesn't mean that I think society should put him to death.
The secondary arguments: that innocent people have been executed, that it doesn't lower the murder rate, that it is more expensive to execute someone than keep them in prison for life, all reinforce the arguments against the death penalty but are not the primary reasons for my position against the death penalty.
Countries that have execution have a whole system of people and institutions that participate in the death: from the judge and jury, the lawyers, to the prison guards. Is that what society wants?
More important, by causing his death you usually cause more heartbreak, not less, by his family members and people who are against the death penalty. And even some victim family members realize the folly of the death penalty.
In fact, I think that having the death penalty legitimizes (and increases) the use of murder and force in the minds of certain people, the very thing the death penalty is supposed to lessen.
Behind it all is moral turpitude, fear and greed. A group of humans with the power to decide who lives and who dies and what laws are used as cover. And it does not end there.
State power is an illusion. What you have are power groups and cabals operating behind an amorphous entity called the state.
So, I may ask who judges and sentences those responsible for "heavenly" drone attacks that have murdered scores of "disposable people", hundreds of thousands dead, maimed or displaced in Iraq alone. And who is to judge the architects and there lieutenants of neo liberal policies that have led to millions of deaths and destitution throughout the so called global south. Who judges, the WTO, World Bank, IMF and other merchants of death, the wicked an awesome cruelty occurring in Gaza today, who judges the mineral racketeers and consequent war in the Congo. Who has the power to define who is good or evil, right or wrong? Moral or Immoral. It matters not what the truth is. It only matters who has the power to define it. Whatever “they” put on our collective plate is what “we” consume.
The death penalty is entertainment. The comments of people who want an execution show that the primary emotion is one of hatred for the prisoner, who almost always had no contact with the person cheering on the execution, and happiness at the prospect of his execution. It's also obvious that despite crocodile tears about the prisoner's victims, no feeling is expressed toward the family of the prisoner, who often undergo a lot of grief over the execution.
Hatred for strangers is more like prejudice than rational thought.
There has to be a better justification for execution than entertainment. No one seems to be able to come up with one.
Just think of it as 4th trimester abortion; if you don't mind killing a fetus why worry about killing a sniper?
I don't miss killers and don't pray for them not to be executed, but I can't get upset when they get life in prison either. No matter how you look at it, unless a killer is acquitted, his/her life is over. No matter how quickly and brutally vengeance is exacted, it brings no innocent people back.
Let The DC Sniper live and address and rectify the conditions that create people like him.
Look at how Norway treats their violent criminals and look at how violent their society isn't...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4L6-0WRfSA&yt=&yt
make him cheney's valet
As far as I know, there is no question regarding his guilt. I personally see no problem with him being executed. That being said, this country's legal system is seriously flawed. If he was a millionaire or billionaire he would probably already be out of jail. However, I am not morally opposed the death penalty as a concept, it just needs to be used more fairly (including for serious cases of corporate-crime).
Death as a deterrent is overated. If it were such a deterrent then high risk jobs like soldier, police, firefighter or even certain sports would be hard to fill, but they aren't and I don't think anyone going into those jobs has any illusion about the possible outcome. So the very idea of death as a deterrent is flawed. If you ask most people I am certain that life under certain conditions is far worse than death. Thus the line "Give me liberty or give me death!"
While I agree with all the premises of your argument against capital punishment in general -- that it is not an effective deterrent, that it is often arbitrarily applied and sometimes applied with racial bias, that it is often expensive, and that the convicted may actually be innocent -- I don't see how these premises justify your conclusion that the DC sniper should not be executed.
There is little reason to believe that any punishment would have deterred him from committing his multiple murders (or could deter anyone like him from committing similar acts), but we agree (I presume) that he should be punished.
There is no evidence that there's even a question of racial prejudice in the application of capital punishment in this case, and you yourself admit the justifiability of the extraordinary outrage that the targeted murder of 10 strangers, selected at random – crimes for which Mr. Muhammad refuses to accept responsibility or apologize – has generated, which suggests that capital punishment was not applied to this case arbitrarily.
Carrying out the death sentence in this case has not proven to be significantly more expensive than if Mr. Muhammad had been sentenced to life without parole.
And the evidence against Mr. Muhammad is incontrovertible, as you yourself agree.
Therefore, your argument does not support your conclusion.
I would suggest that in the future you pursue a different line of argument in criticizing the capital punishment of unapologetic mass murderers. What is needed is an argument that actually supports your strong claim that capital punishment is morally equivalent to premeditated murder. Unfortunately, a simple equivalence claim is not possible here, since it is so counterintuitive. Indeed, we regularly distinguish premeditated murder from all sorts of other premeditated puttings-to-death, from warfare to the end-of-life decisions of doctors and patients’ families. Accordingly, your argument will have to show not only why capital punishment is morally equivalent to premeditated murder instead of being akin to these other puttings-to-death or sui generis, but why the moral intuitions of the great majority of your audience are so mistaken that they routinely draw distinctions like the one between the sniper’s murdering of numerous innocents at random and the putting to death of an unremorseful murderer after a long, thorough, and fair trial.
Such an argument would be a tremendous step forward for the abolitionist movement, which often relies on the kinds of arguments you put forward in the article. These arguments are so rarely effective because they are but a non sequitor when discussing particular cases like Mr. Muhammad, where the crime is especially heinous and the evidence especially clear. Only when we have good arguments for the immorality of capital punishment in even these exceptional cases, though, will we be able to abolish capital punishment once and for all.
I don't approve of the state having the power to kill any of us.
Someone that clearly commits murder has no legitimate call of mercy from his fellow men, so anyone who wishes has moral authority to kill him if they wish. In an equitable society, I think those closest to the victim have right of first refusal. If no one wants to kill him then he gets to live. Of course, he has forfeited all his other civil rights and his only hope of survival will be to ostracize himself. Either way we are all protected from the animal disguised as a human.