Blessed are the merciful
Less than 12 hours ago the State of Virginia executed John Allen Muhammed. I’m sure most people will recall the killing spree he went on in 2002 when the media dubbed him “The Washington Sniper”. Muhammed stalked the suburbs and, from a concealed location, shot people at random with a high-powered rifle. By the time he was caught ten people were dead and four seriously injured. Prior to his execution, Muhammed expressed no remorse for his actions.
Over at The Guardian, Virginia Moffatt has written a column headlined John Allen Muhammed deserved mercy. But as is so often the case with the work of sub-editors and headline writers, this misrepresents her argument. I don’t believe Moffatt actually suggests that Muhammed deserved mercy. I believe her position is a little more subtle; a fact that escaped both the sub-editor and the legion of commentators on her piece insisting — with, I suspect, no little froth — that Muhammed deserved to die.
Moffatt’s primary objection to the execution of Muhammed, and I suspect to the death penalty in general, is not that murderers deserve to live, but that putting them to death “diminishes our humanity”. To me, this is the crux of the death penalty debate and the reason I too am absolutely opposed to it. Of course, Moffatt goes a little far and damages her own argument by suggesting that the execution of Muhammed “makes us no better than the murderer [himself]”.
Terrorising three states for a period of weeks by randomly killing residents, leaving 14 people dead or injured and co-opting a teenager into your murderous plan… well, that probably counts as a worse crime than catching and killing the person who did it. So I really wish that those who — like me — oppose the death penalty, would stop trotting out the “it makes us no better than them” cliché. It would be a very difficult claim to substantiate even if your audience was comprised entirely of wise moral philosophers with no personal axe to grind. But in the real world, where almost all of us allow our gut feelings and emotions to influence our judgment, it just sounds silly.
Nonetheless, I’ll stick by the first part of Moffatt’s argument, even if it also requires a certain overcoming of our gut reaction. A failure to show mercy does indeed diminish our humanity.
See, this is the bit that most people (judging by the comments on Moffatt’s article) fail to understand. We do not show mercy to people like Muhammed because he deserves mercy. We don’t show mercy because of what it offers him. We do it because of what it offers us. Just as forgiveness — which tends to come a long time after mercy — is less about what it offers those who have harmed us, than it is about healing ourselves.
To show mercy is to grant a victory to compassion over hatred. It reinforces the light while diminishing the darkness. It makes us better people. That is why John Allen Muhammed should not have received a lethal injection last night. Not because he deserved mercy. But because we do.
Hello there,
Thanks so much for reading my article and your thoughtful response. I’m kind of overwhelmed by people’e reactions to a piece I wrote fairly quickly, trying to get my main points down.
I guess my point that we are no better than John Allen Muhammed by killing him needs a bit of expansion. Obviously, what he did was horrific. I still can’t get my head round all those families who have lost people they loved, and all those people injured. I suppose what I mean is that, it doesn’t matter if we kill one person or a hundred, the minute we choose to kill, we are dehumanised. And in the case of the State doing the killing, I find something completely chilling about the meticulous planning necessary to make it happen. So that seems inhuman to me. As does John Allen Muhammed’s crimes.
His lawyers said he was mentally ill, and his family seem to be saying the same. I don’t know whether he was or not. If he was, it seems some mitigation to his actions. If he wasn’t, it was a work of random evil that is beyond understanding. Either way, I don’t think the world is a better place because we decided to execute him.
November 11th, 2009 | 11:10pm
by Virginia Moffatt
Thanks for taking the time to stop by, Virginia. I was quite taken aback by the tone of some of the comments on your piece over at The Guardian. Mind you, I’m not sure there’s any subject that won’t generate dozens of angry responses on a high-traffic website.
I understand what you mean when you talk of the “chilling” nature of State executions. Such a deliberate, clinical ending of a human life is peculiarly nightmarish, in a way that even many murders aren’t.
I probably overstated my objection to your “no better than the murderer” line a tad… one of the pitfalls of writing on a personal blog with a handful of regular readers. To an extent, I agree with you when you say that “it doesn’t matter if we kill one person or a hundred, the minute we choose to kill, we are dehumanised.” But I also feel that drawing a moral equivalence between mass murder and legally sanctioned execution puts you on very difficult ground.
And I also feel that many of the people who support capital punishment; i.e. the people that need to be won over if it’s ever to be banned; base their position as much on inherited values and personal emotion as on rational consideration. Telling them that their support for the death penalty puts them in the same category as a murderer is ultimately counter-productive. If reason and calm deliberation always prevailed there’d be no Climate Change denial (to take a random example).
I’m interested when you say that Muhammed’s lawyer and family all claim he had a mental illness. Like you, I really don’t know much about the specifics of the case, but it’s clear he suffered from some kind of behavioural disorder… most likely psychopathy. The trouble with that is it’s a hybrid medical / legal term and does not offer mitigation for a person’s actions under the law, though it does “fulfil the useful function of enabling offenders to be treated in special hospitals” (Rycroft).
In cases where the death penalty is passed on the offender, however, it obviously becomes rather less useful in that regard.
November 12th, 2009 | 12:29am
by Jim Bliss
Hi Jim,
Thanks for responding. All fair points.
I can see what you are saying about trying to take a softly, softly approach, and I do agree that sometimes careful wording does help make a case. I do think, however, that it is important to a) say what you believe and b)not mince words sometimes. If it provokes an extreme reaction, that can be a good thing, as it can mean that the person has been troubled enough to think. Perhaps, next time they think about the subject, it might move them forward. I know I was really challenged about my homophobia when young, but I might not have changed if I had not been at a University with a strong and provocative gay and lesbian society. At first, I was shocked, then it became normal and finally when I heard personal stories, I changed my beliefs. I really honestly don’t think it matters whether a person kills a hundred people or one,I believe choosing to kill him/her in return can never be right. So I stand by my comment in the piece.
With regards to the mental health angle. In Britain, it is a justifiable defence to say that your mental health problems led to diminished responsibility. Perhaps it is not the case in the States, but to me there is an enormous difference between someone choosing to kill, knowing and understanding the consequences of their actions, and someone who is too ill to reason, who may be hearing voices, seeing things, suffering from post-traumatic stress. I don’t think we should execute either person, but the first should be locked in prison and the second given medical treatment. In the case of Mr Muhammed, it seems as if his problems started after he came back from fighting a war on behalf of his country, which seems to me even more sad. If, perhaps, his country had looked after him and treated his illness, this might never have happened.
Thanks for taking the time to think and talk through these issues.
Virginia
November 14th, 2009 | 2:33pm
by Virginia Moffatt
Regarding your first point, Virginia, I think we’re basically in agreement but perhaps favour a slightly different approach in how our position should be expressed. Given that it usually doesn’t hurt to tackle an issue in several different ways, this is probably a good thing in truth.
I have a slight difficulty with your second point though.
We’re in agreement that execution is wrong in all cases. However you are making a mistake when you conflate all “mental health problems” together into something that automatically leads to diminished responsibility.
I’m in the psychoanalytic field, and although I specialise in group psychodynamics as opposed to individual mental health matters, I can assure you that it’s a good deal more complex than saying “X had mental health problems therefore has a diminished responsibility for their actions”. From what I know of John Allen Muhammed the most likely explanation for his behaviour would be some level of psychopathy. I am unaware of any legal system that presents psychopaths as having diminished responsibility. In many countries (England and Wales included, but not Scotland) criminal psychopaths do receive medical treatment, but there is no suggestion that they are not fully responsible for their actions.
See, psychopathy is a very complex phenomenon. As I mentioned earlier, it is actually a medical and legal hybrid rather than simply a medical diagnosis. And one of the defining elements of it is that the psychopath is fully aware of the consequences of their actions. It is this lack of awareness of consequences in certain forms of psychosis (which is completely distinct from psychopathy and should never be conflated) that results in what we call ‘diminished responsibility’.
If Mr. Muhammed was shown to be suffering from a paranoid psychosis or some kind of schizophrenic illness, then we could talk of diminished responsibility. But I’ve yet to hear any evidence of that (which isn’t to say it doesn’t exist, merely that I’ve not seen it). The methodical nature of his crimes along with the extreme care he took to elude capture make psychopathy a more likely diagnosis than psychosis.
November 14th, 2009 | 3:12pm
by Jim Bliss