Not in my name - irrationality of the death penalty

Humanist, March-April, 1993 by Barbara Dority

It is 12:30 Am on Tuesday morning, January 5, 1993. Just minutes ago, in the gallows room at the Walla Walla state penitentiary, officials of Washington state placed a black hood over the head and shoulders of convicted child rapist and murderer Westley Allan Dodd. They bound his hands and feet with straps, carefully knotted a rope under his jaw, sprang the trap door on which he stood, and hanged him by his neck until he was dead. According to most witnesses (after over 100 reporters vied for the privilege, the lucky ones were chosen by lottery), the procedure was "surreal, sterile, efficient, and amazingly swift."

For many weeks, the media has been in a macabre frenzy in anticipation of the obscene and sickening spectacle: the first execution by hanging in the United States since 1965. This ritual murder was performed on behalf of Washington's citizens and in our names, using our tax monies, our employees, even our rope. In return, we were able to witness our state committing a detached, brutal, premeditated homicide.

This barbarity was cheered on by a sizable crowd outside the penitentiary. Many wore nooses around their necks, and some carried signs: "Hang Him High!" "Kill Him!" and "Let Dodd Dangle!" They wrote "HANG HIM!" in huge letters in the snow and sang, "All we are saying, is give death a chance." At 12:01 AM, the scheduled time of death, they cheered, set off fire-crackers, and opened bottles of champagne.,

This was the first execution in Washington state since 1963. Dodd was the first of 12 prisoners the state is moving to execute. Because his crimes were so heinous, and because he repeatedly said that he wanted to be hanged and rebuffed any efforts to prevent it, many feel that we who oppose the death penalty were wrong in trying to prevent the state from killing him.

Last night, numerous experts were paraded before the television cameras; all of them said that Dodd was a sadistic psychopathic pedophile incapable of empathy, that his greatest fear was being "a nobody," and that he had successfully manipulated us into making him "a somebody" via the sensational media coverage of his hanging.

Did it therefore make moral sense to do what this deranged human being wanted us to do? Should we have abbetted him in his final vile crime - that of making murderers out of us as well? Henry Schwarzchild of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty points out that execution - even when "consensual" - is not a state, assisted suicide but, rather, prisoner,assisted homicide. (If prisoners attempt to actually commit suicide, the state intervenes to prevent it.)

Abolitionists maintain that the state has no right to kill anyone; a prisoner's death wish cannot grant a right not otherwise possessed. The right to reject life imprisonment and choose death should be respected, but it changes nothing for those of us who oppose that death at the hands of the state.

Over 2,600 people are sitting on death rows in the United States-more than at any time in our history. Since 1930, when the federal government began collecting such data, over 3,900 executions have been recorded. Since 1976, when the Supreme Court lifted the ban on execution, 170 people have been killed. Because these official killings have been perpetrated in our names, it is every American's responsibility to give careful consideration to the facts regarding this crucial issue.

The death penalty is irrational - a fact that should carry considerable weight with rationalists. And, as Albert Camus pointed out, "Capital punishment ... has always been a religious punishment and is irreconcilable with humanism." In other words, this archaic and barbarous "custom" comes to us from the cruel "eye for an eye" anti-human caves of religion - another factor that should raise immediate misgivings for freethinkers.

State killings are morally bankrupt. Why do we kill people to show other people that killing people is wrong? We become complicit with murderers when we replicate their deeds. Would we allow rape as the penalty for rape - or the burning of arsonists' homes as the penalty for arson?

The state should never have the power to murder its subjects. To give the state this power eliminates the individual's most effective shield against the tyranny of the majority and is inconsistent with democratic principles.

Families and friends of murder victims are further victimized by state killings. Quite a few leaders in the movement to abolish the death penalty became involved specifically because someone they loved was murdered. One of these, Marie Deans, says:

The violence of murder is abhorrent,

but the long sequence of

trials and appeals that ultimately

lead to another killing is not a

solution but a process of carrying

on violence. While it goes on, the

family lives a day, to, day existence

focused on the death of their

loved one. Somehow we must find

a better, more humane way to

deal with murder, a way that does

not twist sorrow into vengeance

and memory into nightmare.

The families of Dodds' three victims - as well as members of his own family - repeatedly stated they wanted him to die. One of their main reasons-in addition to the desire for justice (read: vengeance) - was that they wanted it to be over; they didn't ever want to see Dodd's picture or hear or read his words in the media again. Yet, if it weren't for the sensationalism attending the death penalty itself, the media exposure (and, in most cases, the many years of appeals) would not occur in the first place.