I read a NY Times article today (to which I link in the first comment below) about the forthcoming trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and it saddens me greatly. As it points out, three of Massachusettss most prominent anti-death penalty politicians have in this case been silent, and even though a lengthy appeals process would most likely make a death penalty verdict the practical equivalent of (though much more expensive than) life without parole (which indeed Bostonians favor by almost two to one), federal prosecutors appear to be seeking vengeance more than justice. To be clear, I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty. I am convinced of its inappropriateness as a just punishment and ineffectiveness as a deterrent -- convinced and convicted by the evidence that it is disproportionately applied to poor defendants and defendants of color, that many of those executed are later proven innocent, that the process of appeals and requesting of stays of execution and commutation of sentences is generally more expensive to the state and painful to victims and their families than life without parole, and that life sentences offer the possibility of both repentance of the guilty and liberation of the innocent. Furthermore, as a Christian, I am deeply disturbed by the seductiveness of the desire for blood vengeance, by the ease with which our own pain slips into the lust for others pain and death. God does not desire the death of sinners, the Prophet Ezekiel tells us, but that they turn from their sin and live. Yet we, in our weakness and insecurity, try desperately and futilely to assert our own strength and control precisely by desiring the death of *other* sinners (for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God). We demand justice untempered by mercy, a burning justice that we falsely believe will cleanse us of our pain and loss. We cry, Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, betraying how much we yearn to have that power of vengeance for our own. The problem is, a principle is a principle. If one opposes the death penalty, one must be prepared to oppose it for the guilty as well as for the innocent, for the monstrous as well as for the sympathetic. A principle cannot be set aside for emotion or political expediency; if it can, it is not a principle, but merely a desire to feel principled. I can no more set aside my opposition to the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Timothy McVeigh, or Ted Bundy than I can cease to mourn the terrible miscarriage of justice in the wrongful execution of George Stinney. No doubt there will be those who would say that I would feel differently if I had been in Boston on the day of the Marathon Bombing. Perhaps I would, perhaps I wouldnt -- but my feelings have nothing to do with it. I was living in New York during the 9/11 attacks, and I know what it feels like to live in a wounded city. I know how that pain can turn so easily, slide so smoothly into righteous fury. I confess, when Osama bin Laden was killed, a part of me was glad -- yet that is not a part I am proud of. At best, it was a limited and insufficient justice. At worst, in celebrating his death, I distanced myself from true justice and from God; I put myself in the mob cheering a lynching; I stood before the palace of Pilate and shouted Crucify him! and I did not wash my hands. This is not to say that I equate bin Laden with Christ or that I consider him innocent -- far from it. Yet still, in seeking, accomplishing, and rejoicing in his death, we betray ourselves: that we trust our own expedient justice more than a greater -- if possibly less satisfying -- justice that comes in the fullness of time, that vengeance masked as closure matters to us more than principle. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that we should so easily embrace torture and drone killings in the name of expediency and American victory, that politicians should so really pander to the worst of human nature -- and we let them.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 17:55:20 +0000
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