This is a spin-off of this post by ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) benchilada, which I brought to my journal because I didn't want to clog his comment box with my personal, philosophical waxing that is, frankly, off the point of his post.
So, you have to keep in mind that there are rules of logic here. One of them is that there is a separation of church and state. This is important, because you can't use religious morality to answer this dilemma.
Our Constitution, i.e. the document that shapes our laws and allegedly gives rise to decisions like this, lists three inalienable rights: life, liberty, and property.
So we're clear, "inalienable" means that you cannot give the right up. It does NOT mean that it cannot be taken from you. Inalienable means you cannot repudiate or transfer those rights. It means that you cannot put yourself into slavery. It means you cannot disallow yourself from possessing property. And, I guess it means you can't kill yourself. But, again, the Constitution does NOT mean that these rights cannot be taken from you.
On the other hand, the fact that the Constitution doesn't allow us to alienate our life, liberty, and property is a pretty clear indicator that they are the most highly regarded rights of a human existence. Yes, they can be taken from you even when you can't give them up, but we don't allow you to give them up because of how fundamental they are to the human condition. So while inalienable doesn't mean "can't be taken away", it does mean that these rights must be accorded a great deal of respect.
Then we've got the Eighth Amendment, which disallows cruel and unusual punishments. Cruel and unusual punishments are:"Such punishment as would amount to torture or barbarity, any cruel and degrading punishment not known to the Common Law, or any fine, penalty, confinement, or treatment that is so disproportionate to the offense as to shock the moral sense of the community." Now here's my gripe: the Supreme Court just decided that the death penalty is cruel and unusual when it is sentenced to any person who's crime did not end a human life. Specifically, it applied this in overturning a jury sentence of death that was given to man who was convicted of violently raping his 8 year old step-daughter so brutally that she required emergency surgery on her vagina and anus. Why is it that we consider the deprivation of a person's life cruel and unusual, but we don't consider the very institution of prison cruel and unusual? Notice that prison deprives a person of their liberty and property (at the expense of society no less). The death penalty deprives persons of their life, and arguably their liberty and property, but I question whether an amoral philosophy can actually find a deprivation of liberty or property in the absence of life. That is to say, how can the dead have either liberty or property at all? Once the life is terminated, it has no capacity for liberty or property, and I believe therefore, that prison constitutes the deprivation of two inalienable rights whereas the death penalty only deprives of one.
And yet, as society, we consider it barbaric to execute criminals guilty of the most vile crimes, instead preferring to torture them by way of the deprivation of two of their most important rights. How is prison any less of a torture than that considered to be cruel and unusual? Because it doesn't involve violation of a person's body? It does far more than that, it violates a person's very humanity. And so does the death penalty.
And you know what? I don't buy any of those arguments about how people who spend short terms in prison have suffered a less permanent deprivation than those killed. Yes, those person's can enjoy subsequent liberty and property, but nothing you do will return to them that which was deprived. It is no less an assault upon their humanity. Rather, they get the privilege of living with the scars of those deprivations.
This has reached the point that it's just a rant for me. It started out there, but now I'm just getting caught up in it, so I'm going to end this post now before it stops making sense. |
