When is vindictiveness productive?

05 Nov 2009

A while back, I wrote about what I thought the ramifications of Chris Brown’s well-publicized abuse of Rihanna would be. And I compared it to a somewhat more extreme case, that of Scott Roeder. I’m going to go out on a limb, and do something pretty similar. Rihanna has just spoken out about the incident for the first time since the beating occured. Also notably, the DC Sniper is going to be executed on November 10th.

It’s hard to maintain serious opposition to the death penalty when confronted with a case like this. This is someone who clearly had no intention but to murder innocent civilians, a defense that is morally and practically completely indefensible, period. And if I were required to to prescribe the death penalty as the punishment for a single type of crime, reserving it for the worst of the worst, this might be it.

So what’s so complicated about it? An evil person is going to die, and I’m going to keep on fighting to outlaw the death penalty. Conflicting morals, but nothing we haven’t encountered before when talking about the state executing people.

Except people are going to watch.

Let me repeat that: people are going to watch.

The state offered the family of every victim two seats. Call them front-row; they will stand in a ten-foot square room and watch as John Allen Muhammad is strapped to a gurney and injected with poison. They will watch him die.

I know, I know, this is a bit dramatic. But it just seems so wrong to me.

I’m in no position to criticize the hate and misery those people must feel. I cannot even imagine how incredibly hard it must be to have a loved one taken in that manner by the randomly targeted cruelty of another. And there’s pretty much nothing in the world I’d deny those people as recourse.

Except this. I have a sense of complete moral revulsion at the thought of taking pleasure or feeling justice as you watch someone die, stripped of any dignity they might ever have had. I won’t speculate on their motives, because, again, I cannot even try to put myself in their position, but one of the victims (who survived and chose not to attend the execution) said “There was enough killing already with us.” How could anyone want to experience more death, more pain, more loss, after having gone through that?

I never though I’d call domestic abuse “trivial”, but comparing this to what happened to Rihanna is just that. But she had the courage to speak out about it. She’s not vindictive, she’s productive.

What if, instead of watching this freak-show of a justice system, each of those families declined the invitation, and told the state to use their funds to improve subsidized housing, or welfare programs, or other social infrastructure? How much more bitterness and death and tax dollars do we need to inject into the veins of society before we realize what a waste it is?

How many more innocent people will be sniped? How many more innocent people will be executed (h/t thewanderingjew)?

And how many more will watch?