Sadistic Reformatory Plebianism

You have the Neo-Darwinists, the Neo-Conservatives and I am going to introduce to you now to a new Neo- category … drum roll please … THE NEO-DEATH PENALTYISTS!

What is “Neo-” about them? The original justifications for death penalty have been shown to be shallow – the punishment is not a deterrent, does not render justice to the victim unless one considers revenge as justice in itself, does not save money for the exchequer. So, some new theses have to be developed. Hence, Neo-Death Penaltyism!

In the year 2000, more than a decade ago, in a piece in the New Republic, Josh Marshall advanced the then new theory of “elitism” as regards death penalty. This piece tagged politicians of every country that had its conscience pricked by death penalty as “elitist”. This is one of the new theses that mark Neo-Death Penaltyism. The “Common man” supports death penalty.

The fact that a recent Wall Street Journal piece by James Taranto traced back this Ur “elitism” theory to something written more than a decade ago tells a lot about the traction it got, even in the “non-elitist” America.

“[T]he populous in most countries support the death penalty, but their politicians forbid it,” is how Peter Catapano in his article They Messed With Texas in the New York Times of September 9, 2011 interpreted death penalty “elitism”, particularly of the political kind, as he went effectively towards dismantling the thesis. Catapano added, “In other words, the political systems in these other countries are ‘morally superior’ but ‘less democratic’, Marshall wrote.” Let us assume that Marshall was right.

Now, I want to take you back about a century and see some of the “democratic” processes at work then in India, even under the yoke of imperialism. It was the “elitism” of the reformers that abolished Sati. Had it been left to the workings of democracy it is highly likely that we would have the practice of sati even now. I wonder whether my mother would have died of cancer.

I will contextualize the above: a reasonably regular reader of my blog who, if I interpret her position correctly, is against banning death penalty. While she had agreed that the Indian Supreme Court’s stand based on rarest of rare cases criterion is unsatisfactory to the core, she still wants death penalty for terrorists. She had also advanced this “elitism” argument, though calling it "liberalism".

So far so good. However, besides not defining terrorism, she had not mentioned anything on how to exclude a criminal who snuffed out a life from death penalty. And, let us not argue on what clauses of the various criminal and penal codes mandate or otherwise death penalty. We are talking about an overarching principle.

A BMW driven by a drunk in the middle of the night killing people – does this driver deserve death penalty? If yes, where is the exit to this slippery slope? No answer. If no, how did she find that particular exit? Point blank shooting of a toll booth attendant for doing his duty? Frying three people in a jeep who indulged in religious conversion, not an illegal act – how can it not be an act of terrorism?

The suicide bomber is dead. Then, do the next-of-kin, the people who strapped the bomb to her waist, deserve death penalty? What kind of connections have to be established? Or is it enough that the victim was high profile and some heads-for-a head is unquestionably warranted? Why was a pregnant female of the terrorist group given a reprieve from the last march to the gallows? Oh, we took compassion at the yet-to-be-born, notwithstanding the fact that the child would have been born of two criminals!

Will flouting international laws or treating sovereign covenants with contempt enroute to causing death of civilians deserve death penalty? Oh, I forgot to add the adjective innocent (No Afghanistani is innocent, of course). If yes, why aren’t George Bush and Barack Obama not given that sentence? Civilian deaths are airily dismissed as “collateral damage.” 

There is enough arbitrariness in this matter to stand the idea of justice on its head.

A century ago, we did not let the then existing law take its natural course in the case of Sati. The reformers, the "elitists", intervened and set the society on the morally straight path. This is why while the people are for death penalty, the enlightened governments are against this barbaric act; not because it is “elitism”.

I now come to the second neo-argument for death penalty. Let me call this the “sadist” argument. This is easier to dismiss. Death penalty prods civil society (not of the Anna Hazare kind) to raise issues of prison conditions. Add to that, given the prison conditions, death penalty is indeed less cruel than life sentence without parole. I am not joking – this argument has been advanced by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, writing for the American Scene in a piece with the longish title, A long disquisition on the death penalty that ultimately doesn’t resolve anything.

The only justification Gobry has against death penalty is that it is less cruel than life term without parole. He would argue for abolishing death penalty to merely maximize cruelty! Marquis de Sade could not have said it better!

However, Ross Douthat, writing in the New York Times (Justice After Troy Davis, September 24, 2011) wants to keep death penalty only for it to be reformed. Seriously. His words: “…gradually reforming the death penalty – imposing it in fewer situations and with more safeguards, which other defendants can benefit from as well – might do more than outright abolition to address the larger problems with crime and punishment in America.” More safeguards against sentencing the innocent, but not fool proof, you must note in the above. During the process of death penalty reform, if innocents are murdered, well, that is too bad, yet mere collateral damage.

Have you puked yet? There is not a word above about the possibility of the state killing an innocent in the above justification, which he had indeed clearly acknowledged earlier: “If capital punishment disappears in the United States, it won’t be because voters and politicians no longer want to kill the guilty. It will be because they are afraid of executing the innocent.” Murdering 235 people (the current governor of Texas and a presidential hopeful Rick Perry’s record in office), at least some of them innocent, is not as large a problem as prison conditions.

So, let me make sense of the above. Killing an innocent is OK as far as there is forward movement towards reforming the criminal justice system. This is the other thesis advocating death penalty.

Therefore, I take the liberty of combining the new theses of the Neo-Death Penaltyists and name it “Sadistic Reformatory Plebianism”.

Raghuram Ekambaram