Deja Vu

December 11, 2008

Penal Pageantry

Tags:

capital punishment,

Cesare Beccaria,

executions,

prison

“Executions and Death Sentences in United States Dropped in 2008, Report Finds,” The New York Times, Dec. 11, 2008.

LOS ANGELES — The use of capital punishment in the United States waned this year, as state and federal courts executed 37 inmates, a 14-year low, according to a new report. And courts sentenced 111 people to death in 2008, the lowest number of new condemnations in three decades….

Richard C. Deiter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said that the decline in executions proved that capital punishment was becoming less popular.

“Revelations of mistakes, cases reversed by DNA testing, all of these things have put a dent in the whole system and caused hesitation,” Mr. Deiter said. “I don’t think what is happening is a moral opposition to the death penalty yet, but there is a greater scrutiny applied to the death penalty that wasn’t there before.”

“Of the Punishment of Death,” from Of Crimes and Punishments, by Cesare Bonesana, Marquis of Beccaria, 1764.
Beccaria’s treatise was the first complete penological study written by a European. Chapter 28, which comprises a criticism of capital punishment, is also one of the earliest Western examples of anti-death penalty literature.

The punishment of death is pernicious to society, from the example of
barbarity it affords. If the passions, or the necessity of war, have taught
men to shed the blood of their fellow creatures, the laws, which are
intended to moderate the ferocity of mankind, should not increase it by
examples of barbarity, the more horrible as this punishment is usually
attended with formal pageantry. Is it not absurd, that the laws, which
detest and punish homicide, should, in order to prevent murder, publicly
commit murder themselves? What are the true and most useful laws? Those
compacts and conditions which all would propose and observe in those moments
when private interest is silent, or combined with that of the public. What
are the natural sentiments of every person concerning the punishment of
death? We may read them in the contempt and indignation with which every one
looks on the executioner, who is nevertheless an innocent executor of the
public will, a good citizen, who contributes to the advantage of society,
the instrument of the general security within, as good soldiers are without.

What then is the origin of this contradiction? Why is this sentiment of
mankind indelible to the scandal of reason? It is, that, in a secret corner
of the mind, in which the original impressions of nature are still
preserved, men discover a sentiment which tells them, that their lives are
not lawfully in the power of any one, but of that necessity only which with
its iron sceptre rules the universe.

What must men think, when they see wise magistrates and grave ministers of
justice, with indifference and tranquility, dragging a criminal to death,
and whilst a wretch trembles with agony, expecting the fatal stroke, the
judge, who has condemned him, with the coldest insensibility, and perhaps
with no small gratification from the exertion of his authority, quits his
tribunal, to enjoy the comforts and pleasures of life? They will say, "Ah!
those cruel formalities of justice are a cloak to tyranny, they are a secret
language, a solemn veil, intended to conceal the sword by which we are
sacrificed to the insatiable idol of despotism. Murder, which they would
represent to us an horrible crime, we see practised by them without
repugnance or remorse. Let us follow their example. A violent death appeared
terrible in their descriptions, but we see that it is the affair of a
moment. It will be still less terrible to him who, not expecting it, escapes
almost all the pain." Such is the fatal though absurd reasonings of men who
are disposed to commit crimes, on whom the abuse of religion has more
influence than religion itself.

If it be objected, that almost all nations in all ages have punished certain
crimes with death, I answer, that the force of these examples vanishes when
opposed to truth, against which prescription is urged in vain. The history
of mankind is an immense sea of errors, in which a few obscure truths may
here and there be found.

But human sacrifices have also been common in almost all nations. That some
societies only it either few in number, or for a very short time, abstained
from the punishment of death, is rather favourable to my argument; for such
is the fate of great truths, that their duration is only as a flash of
lightning in the long and dark night of error. The happy time is not yet
arrived, when truth, as falsehood has been hitherto, shall be the portion of
the greatest number.

I am sensible that the voice of one philosopher is too weak to be heard
amidst the clamours of a multitude, blindly influenced by custom; but there
is a small number of sages scattered on the face of the earth, who will echo
to me from the bottom of their hearts; and if these truths should happily
force their way to the thrones of princes be it known to them, that they
come attended with the secret wishes of all mankind; and tell the sovereign
who deigns them a gracious reception, that his fame shall outshine the glory
of conquerors, and that equitable posterity will exalt his peaceful trophies
above those of a Titus, an Antoninus, or a Trajan.

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