Pope Francis has altered Catholic teaching by declaring the death penalty an attack on human dignity. The Vatican is correct and conservative politicians should work to purge this lethal tool from states’ arsenals.
Properly understood conservatism finds the death penalty unconscionable. Simply put, the party of life cannot also be the party of death.
There are an exhaustive number of problems with the adjudication of death penalty cases as well as its evils including the cost of capital punishment, the length of time on death row, and the accuracy of verdicts. Those arguments have merit and meaning, but social conservatives like the Pope need to approach capital punishment from the perspective of recalibrating the definition of justice and refocusing the goals of our criminal justice system.
First, we must establish what justice means in our culture. Criminal justice debates often reflect an oscillating tension between what is a fair debt to society and what is a fair result for victims. As a result, we have constructed a criminal justice system that reflects the principle that criminals owe society something in payment for their crimes with the added consideration that prosecutors may consider victim input into punishment. In cases of murder or extreme harm, many states authorize that this debt can be your life at the hands of an executioner.
Is this then some heightened debt paid rather than decades behind bars? As Lin Manuel Miranda says, “dying is easier, living is harder.” And in the cold reality of a life for a life, how different are we really from some wild west where we string perpetrators up to show what happens when you take a life rather than the medically administered soft executions we perform now?
Second, it’s worth noting again that prosecutors consider victim input when seeking the death penalty, but don’t necessary take as gospel. We do this because victims that lose loved ones are in an incomprehensible grief and anguish. They would be more compassionate than if they showed the grace to not seek death on those that cause them and their loved ones pain. No one would blame them. But vengeance is not the same thing as justice.
Some conservative writers like David French at National Review contend that the only way to preserve human dignity from someone who snuffs out human life is to execute them. He notes Old Testament, New Testament, and constitutional authority of the government to take life. Yet, undermining the argument is the necessary concession that by taking human dignity from someone else, one loses their own human dignity or the right to their human dignity. Surely that can’t be true. This notion seems more supportive of Hammurabi’s code than our modern or even traditional understanding of cruel and unusual punishment.
Furthermore, capital punishment requires society and an executioner to be in the business of ending life. Murder is inherently evil. We want protection and accountability from those that murder others. But, when murderers are locked up, there is no positive good for society that comes through killing those that kill. It brings only further death and we are worse off for it by the participation in the destruction of a life, albeit a disgusting life.
Conservatives are champions of the unborn precisely because every life carries value. Without this approach, our policies are more akin to vengeance than justice. Conservatives should be fighting for even the most evil of inmates to have as many opportunities as possible in prison to recognize our common humanity before they see their final day in prison and meet their Maker.
The Pope has righted Catholic teachings on the death penalty. Conservatives should follow suit.
Tyler Grant (@The_Tyler_Grant) was a Fulbright Fellow to Taiwan. He studied international law at University of Virginia School of Law and was a double major in Chinese and politics at Washington and Lee University.
