Why the death penalty must be banned

If we reason superficially, drawing conclusions under the influence of fleeting emotions and anger, the death penalty should serve as a deterrent to criminals. However, the world is more complex — surely many readers can recall personal observations where strict prohibitions under threat of severe punishment failed to deter a schoolboy from cigarettes or alcohol; furthermore, many religious murderers were not stopped even by the threat of burning in hellfire for eternity, and in the Middle Ages, the threat of horrific torture did not eliminate crime. In this article, we will express our opinion on why the introduction of the death penalty is unacceptable for modern society.

The deaths of the innocent

The first and most important argument against the death penalty is the irrevocability of such punishment. Currently, there is no court in the world that does not make mistakes, because there are no people who are infallible. Therefore, if the death penalty is introduced, it is almost a hundred percent certainty that among those convicted and executed, there will be people who are entirely innocent. Any supporter of the death penalty, therefore, advocates for the murder of innocent people. Those who support this need to clearly imagine whether they can look into the eyes of the loved ones, parents, and children of someone executed by mistake — something that would not have happened if the death penalty had not been introduced. Will they be able to present to these people the arguments they usually cite, and will such arguments be convincing?

History knows a large number of deaths of innocent people — for example, the high-profile cases of Timothy Evans and Mahmood Hussein Mattan. In 1987, among the death sentences handed down in the US, there were 349 erroneous ones¹. Ask yourself — do you trust the state, the courts, and the police enough to entrust them with your life?

It is logical to consider anyone who introduces the death penalty or votes for its introduction as the murderer of everyone whose life is taken because of it. This includes the murderer of the innocent, and it is to them that the anger of the relatives and friends of those whose lives were taken by mistake will be addressed.

The death penalty does not solve the problem

The death penalty often not only fails to help reduce crime but also leads to even greater brutality in crimes². For example, by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on April 30, 1954, the death penalty for intentional murder was introduced. The result was an increase in the number of murders committed because criminals, in order to reduce the likelihood of being held accountable, began killing not only the victims but also witnesses³. The introduction of the death penalty for aggravated rape in the USSR in 1961 did not lead to a decrease in the number of rapes. At the same time, the number of murders associated with rapes increased, as criminals sought to take the lives of their victims so they could not testify against them⁴.

The fear of the death penalty does not work because criminals, when breaking the law, are usually confident that they will be able to avoid punishment. Moreover, a person who has committed a crime punishable by death and is being pursued by justice may feel they are in a situation where they have nothing to lose, leading them to commit new crimes, including those aimed at avoiding responsibility. Therefore, to create a civilized society and fight crime, what is needed is not the toughening of punishments, but the organization of the maximum possible inevitability and fairness of punishment — that is, increasing the level of the rule of law.

In a study on the link between the death penalty and homicide rates conducted by the UN in 1988 and updated in 2002, the conclusion was:

…it is not prudent to accept the hypothesis that capital punishment deters murder to a marginally greater extent than does the threat and application of the supposedly lesser punishment of life imprisonment⁵.

The true causes of crime are poverty, high levels of inequality, lack of education, and the psychological deviations of a specific criminal. To reduce crime, we must work toward fixing these causes rather than toward toughening punishments.

Diminishing the value of human life

The authors of the “Criminal Law Course”, prepared by the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at Moscow State University, note that the state’s use of the death penalty undermines a fundamental principle of public morality: the total inviolability of human life. In doing so, the state “justifies murder in the public consciousness, reducing the highest value — human life — to the level of a volitional act⁷“. If criminals can be killed, many uneducated people — of whom there are plenty in the state apparatus and law enforcement — naturally ask: why then can’t “traitors” be killed? And the criteria for “treason” can vary wildly, depending on the subjective opinion of whoever decides what constitutes treason and what does not. In such a case, every citizen would live under the threat of execution.

The existence of the institution of the death penalty dehumanizes society. I have spoken out and continue to speak out against the death penalty (and not only in the USSR) also because this measure of punishment implies the existence of a permanent, terrifying apparatus of executioners, an entire institution of the death penalty⁸.

An unworthy method

Maximilien Robespierre, a key figure of the French Revolution, spoke out against the death penalty, yet during the period of the Jacobin dictatorship, he departed from his principle and utilized it. Consequently, he was executed himself, proving that democratic values must never be abandoned. Most of the Old Bolsheviks who called the death penalty a “necessity” were destroyed in the purges of 1937–1938. These cases vividly demonstrate that when the death penalty is introduced, it can be directed at anyone, even (and especially) at those who demand its introduction. In the end, Robespierre’s earlier words ring true:

If, outside of civil society, an enemy attempts to take my life, or if, though repeatedly repelled, he returns to ravage the field I have cultivated, then I must perish or kill him, for I can then only oppose my own personal strength to his, and the law of natural justice justifies and approves of me. But in civil society, when the strength of all is pitted against one, what principle of justice can authorize it to put him to death? And notice one circumstance which decides the question: when society punishes a guilty person, he is no longer in a position to harm it; it holds him in chains, it judges him calmly, it can punish him, and deprive him of the power to inspire fear for the future. A victor who kills his captive enemies is called a barbarian; a man of mature years who kills a wayward child whom he can subdue and punish seems a monster.

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It [the law of the death penalty] is necessary, say the supporters of ancient custom. Who told you so? Have you tested all the means by which laws can act upon human sensitivity? To how many sufferings, physical and moral, is a man not subject before the death penalty! Is man a mere animal, upon whom an impression can be made only by fear of death and bodily torment? No. The source of his pleasant or painful sensations is mainly the moral side of his being. This offers the most food for the severity of the laws. Besides the goods and evils with which nature has endowed man, society creates for him countless others. See by how many new passions it places him under the yoke of laws, see how it binds his happiness to his property, family, friends, country; how, especially, it creates for him a need for the goodwill of those around him. No, death is not always the greatest of evils for a man. He often prefers it to the loss of precious advantages without which life becomes unbearable to him. He would a thousand times rather perish than live as an object of contempt to his fellow citizens.

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Since the legislator can strike citizens in so many sensitive places and in so many ways, why should he consider himself forced to resort to the death penalty? Punishments exist not to torture the guilty, but to prevent crimes through the fear of incurring them.

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Furthermore, gentlemen, if you devise the most perfect judicial order, if you find the most incorruptible and most enlightened judges, there will always remain some room for error and prejudice. Why then deprive yourselves of the possibility of extending a hand to oppressed innocence? Those fruitless regrets, that deceptive restoration of honor which you offer to a hollow shadow, to unfeeling dust, are but a weak satisfaction, but a sad proof of the barbaric absurdity of criminal laws. It belongs only to Him whose eternal eye sees into the depths of hearts to assign irrevocable punishments. You, legislators, cannot take upon yourselves this terrible task without becoming responsible for all the innocent blood that will be shed under the sword of the laws.

Beware of confusing the effectiveness of punishments with an excess of severity: the first is perfectly opposite to the second. Everything promotes just and moderate laws; everything conspires against cruel laws. The indignation excited by a crime is balanced by the compassion inspired by the extreme severity of punishments. The irresistible voice of nature rises against the law in favor of the guilty. Everyone would hasten to hand over the guilty person if the punishment were mild, but one feels nature shudder within at the mere thought of sending them to death. Yes, I am not afraid to say it: that law by which you have obligated all citizens to inform on the guilty will be nothing but an unjust, absurd, and unenforceable law if you retain the death penalty. This first proposition proves the necessity of harmonizing all laws; it proves that an isolated law can become absurd when compared with other laws.

The strength of laws depends on the love and respect they inspire, and this love, this respect, depends on the inner feeling that they are just and reasonable⁹.

Indeed, an adult who punishes a child with extreme cruelty will only raise a cruel person. And if the state exhibits cruelty in punishments, what kind of people will it educate? The one who punishes must himself be better than the guilty; if he lowers himself to the level of the criminal through murder, it will devalue the authority of the punisher and diminish him as a role model. The death penalty is precisely legalized murder, not punishment (because punishment is aimed at the attempt of rehabilitation).

Progressive forces have already stepped on the “rake” of the death penalty at least twice — during the Jacobin dictatorship and during the Bolshevik dictatorship. It is crucial not to step on it a third time, so that a new generation of victorious social democrats is not destroyed by conservative forces, allowing them to take revenge.

Arguments against

Most arguments from death penalty supporters — such as the threat of Lynch law (if the criminal is not executed, indignant people might resort to vigilantism) or the impossibility of recidivism (if the criminal is executed, they can no longer harm anyone) — become untenable when the death penalty is replaced by life imprisonment. There is also talk of the economic injustice of imprisonment — as taxpayers’ money is spent on maintaining criminals in prison. However, maintaining the institution of executioners (salaries for executioners and other staff, ensuring their anonymity, instruments of death, execution facilities, escorting prisoners, and so on) does not come cheap. For instance, in the US, the death penalty is much more expensive than keeping a criminal in prison¹⁰¹¹. And even if cheaper institutions for the death penalty were created because “people don’t want to pay for the scum of society”, this is an insufficient argument for launching such a mechanism.

Summary

Progressive social democrats must primarily fight the causes of crime. Life imprisonment is also a severe punishment, but compared to the death penalty, it has many practical advantages.

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