California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger faced the ultimate responsibility of a governor recently. He had the power to stop the execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams, the former Crips gang leader and convicted murderer. Despite numerous pleas for mercy across the state, nation, and globe, the governor allowed the execution to proceed. Proponents of the death penalty were predictably cheered, opponents outraged.
Several times recently I have been asked to comment on the “redemption” angle in relation to the death penalty. Did it matter that Tookie Williams apparently had become a changed man after 25 years in prison? Was it important that he strongly urged young people to stay away from the gang lifestyle? Should that have tipped the scales towards clemency?
Actually, no, it should not. The very logic of the death penalty presupposes that the purported spiritual or moral state of the person on death row is completely irrelevant to whether or not they should be executed. This, of course, raises the broader and more important question as to why we have the death penalty at all. That is where the debate really needs to focus.
Consider four reasons why a state might impose capital punishment, and the relevance of personal redemption in each case.
If the death penalty is intended as purely retributive, evidence of personal reform on the part of those convicted of capital crimes is immaterial. On this view, people are executed by the state (representing all of us) because they have committed an act of such a heinous nature that the only fitting punishment is that they should forfeit their life in return. Execution today occurs because of the crime/s that took place on a particular day in the past, and anything that happens in between does not matter at all.
Perhaps capital punishment exists in order to deter others from committing capital crimes. If this is the case, then its effectiveness in part hinges on its relentless application to the crimes designated for it. People tempted to murder need to know, not just suspect or fear, that if they kill someone they will die for doing so. This is the logic of deterrence, and if it is the purpose of the death penalty, then, once again, the apparent redemption of the murderer in prison is less than irrelevant.
The theologian John Howard Yoder, an opponent of capital punishment, suggested some years ago that what really drives the death penalty is a primal drive for expiation, or blood atonement. This was certainly apparent in Old Testament teachings that mandated it. The idea is that blood must be spilled to atone for the wrong that has been done, the life that has been unjustly taken. There is a kind of metaphysical damage created by the unjust shedding of blood, and the only way to repair it is to shed blood in return. Here, again, the moral reform of the murderer in prison is irrelevant.
Most people think that the primary purpose of our “correctional system” is, as the name suggests, to correct (rehabilitate) criminals. We send people to jail in order to teach them a lesson about the consequences of wrongdoing; we hope that they will indeed reform and no longer act in such a way as to require further correction. If this is our theory, then the apparent moral reclamation of a murderer would indeed be relevant; that is, if we were not already committed to executing him.
So here's my point: the very logic of the death penalty signifies that rehabilitation is irrelevant to its application. And yet our hearts are tugged, our consciences made uneasy, by the evidence we sometimes see of lives truly changed for the better during long imprisonment — especially when we see the positive effect of such lives on others. It seems heartless and cruel to willfully execute such people.
There is some strand in our culture, and in our consciences, that tells us that any system of justice that can make no room for the meaningfulness of personal redemption and moral reform has something wrong with it. It does not fully reflect the best of who we are as a people. It has too much law and not enough gospel.
This is just one reason why some of us are increasingly uneasy about the death penalty, and why we should be.
— David Gushee is Graves professor of moral philosophy and senior fellow of the Carl F.H. Henry Center for Christian Leadership at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.