Playing God

Playing God

Capital punishment as a topic ranks right up there with abortion and euthanasia as the big three to throw any social gathering into disarray if they are thrown into polite conversation. People can joke about pornography (perhaps not snuff films, but certainly most sexual varieties of the art form). But I find that people are simply too invested in the underlying ethics of life and death. As I contemplate this, there is certainly no subjects that are more controversial than a person’s right to live or die on their own terms. And here is the thing, despite the strength of anyone’s personal views, there simply is no right and wrong to these sorts of issues. Religion likes to intercede on the space in all its absolutism and tradition, but the ebb and flow or societal norms over differing eras do more to set the tone than any dogma. And let’s face it, even things as earthshaking as life and death follow trends, perhaps not the way politics flows in one’s psyche over a lifetime, but certainly between generations. And I suspect that the biggest life influences of the topics have to do with the circumstances of one’s own life. An adolescent abortion, a sexual assault, an aged and failing grandparent or a tragic victimization in crime can all make all the difference in perspective.

I will leave abortion and euthanasia for another conversation, but today I want to delve into capital punishment. I will forsake the traditional alignments that suggest that conservatives are pro capital punishment and liberals are anti. There may be truth in that tendency, but I would like to think that all people are thinking beings that apply cognitive process to such important questions. I know that is idealistic, but it allows me to develop my thoughts on the subject with the presumption of no innate bias.

Today was an important day in America. The U.S. government under the Trump administration executed a convicted felon on death row for the first time in seventeen years. What allowed this to occur was a Supreme Court ruling which followed “party” lines of five conservatives in the affirmative and four liberals dissenting on the subject of the constitutionality of the use of lethal injection of pentobarbital. This affected four death row inmates that the Department of Justice under William Barr want to execute at the Federal facility in Indiana. Tonight, one of the four is already dead and two more will be dead later this week thanks to the ruling.

I do not know the facts of any of these cases and for my purposes, I assume they are all dastardly and heinous crimes against humanity as accused and convicted. Let it suffice that in the past forty-seven years, 165 wrongful capital convictions have been overturned in the U.S. If any statistic validates the 1972 Supreme Court opinion on the unconstitutionality of the death sentence (that which was overturned today) that should. Wrongful death is unjustifiable in any situation, but it is somehow more unthinkable in my view as a function of governmental judgement, even if adjudicated by a jury of peers. It is an irreversible course of action that could just as easily be punishable by unpardonable incarceration. Obviously, that would at least leave the margin for error in tact if it were required or new evidence or technology were unveiled. Oh, and by the way, the man executed today claimed on his deathbed that he was innocent as the lethal injection was put into his vein.

It is impossible during these turbulent and upsetting times for people of my sensibilities to not take notice of the arbitrary and capricious nature of the current rule of law under the Trump administration and the Barr Department of Justice, not to mention the Trump (or should I say, McConnell) Supreme Court. But not Barr, McConnell or the conservative Justices used the Presidential power of pardon recently to exonerate a seven-time convicted felon in Roger Stone. That was done by Trump and Trump alone, by Trump and for Trump. What are we to make of a rule of law that holds extreme bias for the friends of the rich and powerful and prefers the absolutism and venality of vengeance in the ultimate manner, through death? This is, indeed a sad day, not just for the executed man and his family, but for all of us for what it says about our collective souls. There has been much discussion about the waning soul of America over the last four or five years and this act by the Court and the Administration is the capstone of the extremity and depths to which the conservatives of this nation have sunk. I am a Christian and am embarrassed by my affiliation with those who claim they are men and women of Christian faith as well and who support the current defilement of the rule of law for the sake of their strongly-held personal beliefs.

The rush of the Trump Administration to force the resumption of executions at this moment in history can only have two logical rationales; either they have a bloodlust of captors who need to have that itch scratched, or, more likely and far more despicable, is the possibility that this is a political act intended to literally throw red meat to the red base that believes in vindication and capital punishment, especially for those not like them. The rush to do this in the potentially waning months of the Trump presidency smacks of accelerated eradication in concentration camps before the end of the Third Reich, when the writing was on the wall. It feels like a Republican version of “and take that!” to the liberal elites that they fear will soon regain power and bring back a view towards clemency that, for some reason, sickens them.

The ultimate conclusion on capital punishment that I have always held is that no one is empowered to play God and only God can decide who lives or dies. Man cannot be the arbiter of such an important fate. I’m certain that my arguments are being loaded into the anti-abortion guns and anti-euthanasia sentiments of those who feel differently than me. I think euthanasia is certainly a very different case of playing God and as for abortion, that conundrum goes on unresolved because it is the “life” of one versus the life of another, if we can agree when life begins. But to place a lethal drug into a person who was convicted of a crime when the other person also convicted of the same crime was given life imprisonment (the circumstances of today’s execution) is a capricious and arbitrary indication that playing God should always be avoided by moral men and women.