After awaiting justice - even military justice - for 17 years, Nidal Malik Hasan will be executed Dec. 3 by firing squad. This, itself, is unremarkable (aside from the concept that “justice delayed is justice denied”), except for the fact the execution will be live streamed.
Now, we had some exchanges about the death penalty - off topic in another thread recently (I apologize for my causing that). I said I generally oppose the death penalty because I do not believe the state should have the power to take lives; that’s because I can’t think of any state power which has not expanded and been abused. This would inevitably apply to the death penalty.
Having said that, if there is to be a death penalty, the only possibility that it may be a general deterrent demands two conditions be met: first, that it be prompt, not 17 years after the crime; second, that it be public - so those who are predisposed to commit capital offenses in the future, have a personal experience of observing the utter powerlessness of a condemned prisoner being executed. Knowing there’s a death penalty in the abstract will deter few, if any (especially if there’s no temporal connection between the crime and the punishment).
If the state is going to dispose of a human being, it ought to represent a meaningful lesson for society - beyond the specific deterrent of ensuring that the individual in question can never commit another capital crime.
A final thought: streaming this horrible event over the internet, does obviate the even more horrible, wild celebratory mob behavior which once characterized public executions, at least in Great Britain and Western Europe in the past. There have been many, many re-enactments of these grotesque events in movies going back some time. The earliest I remember is The Hunchback of Notre Dame. All of them painfully demonstrate how easily we human beings may devolve into inhuman savagery. This should be cautionary. Perhaps it may lack that character when streamed and watched by individuals and small groups. Hopefully, it will be conducted in a solemn and cautionary manner.
By way of a hopeful comparison, I mention in closing how inspired I have been as I watch launches of SpaceX’s Starship. Partly because of John Walker’s posts on Scanalyst, I understand the absolutely enormous cooperative human effort which has gone into creating and perfecting such a grand undertaking. It reveals the human capacity for nobility and real progress.
Bad things happen in this world. Human beings do awful things to other human beings, including taking the victim’s life away.
For most of history (and presumably pre-history too), the response to a murderer was some version of “Off With His Head”. It is OK to be against capital punishment, but first one has to specify what the alternative is to be. In today’s feminized West, the alternative is to tax other innocent people to pay substantial sums for many years to give the evil murderer a comfortable well-tended life behind bars. Kill someone, and never have to worry about making rent or paying for the groceries again. Some punishment!
When we look seriously at the costs of the alternatives, and at the innocent people who pay those costs, capital punishment is clearly the best alternative. However, in an open-and-shut case like this one, there is no reason to delay justice through 10 sessions of Congress; 10 days ought to do it.
Hassan has to be executed military-style, publicly, IF we want to have military forces at all. If deserters, and soldiers who aim at their own side, are NOT shot, or hung—who would stay a soldier after actually seeing battle? Men wound and maim themselves once they’ve seen what they signed up for.
But, they DID sign up ,or they were born into the military obligation of a particular country.
You know I am opposed to the death penalty, as I said on your thread, because I don’t want the state killing its own citizens. BUT, if we need a fighting force—snd I think all countries do—then with regard to them, they have got to know they might as well face death on the battlefield as at the hands of their compatriots. Because those are the ONLY alternatives.
If a soldier murders other human beings who happen to be soldiers, he has to suffer capital punishment. We agree.
Now, what if a soldier murders other human beings who are not soldiers? Does he get away with it because the victims were not in uniform?
And how to deal with the non-soldier who murders other human beings who are not soldiers?
I can understand being opposed to capital punishment, because that is like being opposed to murder. (And who isn’t?). But it is logically essential for the opponent of capital punishment to propose an alternative which is equally effective at prevent recidivism and at convincing other people that murder is not acceptable. And of course to lay out the costs of the alternative, identify who pays those costs, and explicitly recognize what socially desirable things will have to be foregone because of diverting resources to the murderer. Personally, I cannot come up with a viable alternative to prompt legally-controlled capital punishment.
We don’t have prompt capital,punishment as @civilwestman is pointing out. And I don’t think there’s any evidence that capitalpunishment is a deterrent. As for preventing recidivism, well,yuh, dead men can’t kill anyone Else. But, they might not anyway. The only people we can be fairly sure will kill again and again are the criminally insane, the homicidal maniacs, and we don’t even let them stand trial. At any rate, unless the perp was really young when convicted, we re paying to keep these people alive for what is probably their natural lifespan anyway. Only 25 death sentences were executed in 2924, 47 in 2025. So it isn’t very efficient.
War is a different game board. You get medals for killing civilians in war. It’s what you’re s’posed to do. It’s do or die.
The fault is not in our stars, or even in our Contitution’s right to a speedy trial. The fault is in our political/legal system where lawyers being paid by the hour spin out the process interminably. But you already knew I have a great respect for Justice – and not a lot of respect for the people who are supposed to bring it to us.
We don’t know about the deterrent effect of capital punishment on other potential future offenders because we have made such a dog’s breakfast of capital punishment today. But as society becomes poorer, and we no longer see giving murders are lifetime of worry-free leisure as a high priority, I suspect we will once again give prompt capital punishment a serious test.
Well, mebbe…..but they still DO murder other prisoners, all the time. As my prog Public Defender daughter would say, the prison system merely displaces the violence.
I ran across a couple long twitter posts that convey well my opinion on the death penalty and public executions.
The first is from a staunch fellow Roman Catholic, who chastises the Pope (and his immediate predecessor) for playing word games with the Catholic church’s long support and endorsement of the practice. He captures and expresses my own disdain for Pope Leo:
The second is a more secular criticism of modern society’s whitewashing of criminal conduct and the tools society must use to contain it:
I would be very sorry to see this happen. A public execution would then be treated like a sporting event, which is uncivil and abhorrent. I think the only possible antidote would be a brief speech immediately before the execution - either by President Trump or some respectable moral individual - which clearly states the meaning and solemnity of what is about to happen; a “cooler” comes to mind.
Of Vietnam War veteran friend who is very upset about the impending take over by the “democommunists” and Islamist invasion is equally upset about firing squad execution of this murderer. He says that his crime is treason and you don’t honor traitors with a firing squad you hang them.
