Fw from David McR: Capital Punishment

Edge Left: Capital Punishment - the Other Victim


(Edgeleft is an occasional column by David McReynolds. It can be used without further permission)


In the discussion about killing those who kill others, and debating how often it is alright to kill someone we later learn was innocent, as long as we are sure most of those we killed were guilty, we are missing one victim in plain sight - the executioner.


This has bothered me for some time, and Thursday night, March 13th, I happened on a BBC program

(Hard Talk) which had a discussion with Dr. Allen Ault.


Ault was the corrections commissioner for the US State of Georgia, who, on five occasions, authorized the execution of men in his custody.


To take a human life is, in any circumstances, a terrible thing. Society excuses it (encourages it, in fact) in time of war. and justifies it in cases of self-defense. But to take a human life for pay - the classical hit man - is a crime for which many states invoke the death penalty.


Yet that is what the executioner is - a hit man in the pay of the state. He may not know the person to be killed. He has no personal reason for killing the prisoner beyond getting his paycheck. 


In the interview Dr. Ault discussed the case of Christopher Burger, a youth with borderline mental impairment, who, at the age of 17, committed a brutal rape and murder. He spent the next 17 years on death row (which, in itself, is cruel and unusual punishment). Dr. Ault says that Burger matured, got an education in prison, was desperately contrite and that his last words were "forgive me".


I do not for a moment put aside the pain of the family of the victim of the rape and murder. But the execution of Christopher Burger 17 years after the event, is the execution of a different man from the youth who had committed the crime. It cannot void the original crime - only add to it.


That, however, is a classic argument against capital punishment, and I seek here only to focus on the 

"hidden victim" - the executioner, the man who commits a state-sanctioned act of murder for pay.


The question is not just whether the state has the right to take a life, but, if a life is to be taken, who has the right to do so? Perhaps, in a classic sense, the family of the victim. But that is too close to lynching.


We carefully try the defendant, and if found guilty - and if the state has capital punishment - we hire someone who can't even bring a sense of anger to his task.


In the case of Dr. Allen Ault, he finally walked away from the job, and with a small cadre of former death row wardens, has worked against the death penalty. I'll close with the words of Dr. Ault:


"It's the most premeditated form of murder you can possibly imagine and it stays in your psyche for ever. . . . no one has the right to ask a public servant to take on a life-long sentence of nagging doubt, shame and guilt."


(David McReynolds was the Socialist Party candidate for President in 1980 and 2000. He worked for nearly forty years on the staff of the War Resisters League. He is retired, and lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with his two felines. His writings can be found on Edgeleft.org and he can be reached at: [email protected])