Advertisement

Death penalty should be consigned to the past

Death penalty should be consigned to the past

When I was much younger and more idealistic, I wrote a 3000-word essay arguing against the death penalty. It was an assignment for a politics class and, being in the days before the worldwide web, it involved many late-night, instant-coffee-fuelled hours poring over text books and journals looking for material to support my argument.

It was, like now, a time of great public debate on the subject — the summer of 1986, not long after Malaysia hanged Australians Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers for trafficking heroin. I remember there seemed to be just as many in favour of the pair being sent to their death as there were those opposed.

They were, after all, peddling their own form of hell with the scourge of heroin. It had been a caller to talkback radio who had prompted my choice of essay topic.

“I’d pay to watch them swing,” he declared. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. Really? What kind of person would pay to watch another die?

Sadly, my undoubted masterpiece of persuasive text has long been lost.

But some things have not changed with the passing of time. I still believe the death penalty has no place in a civilised society.

And those bloodthirsty calls to talkback radio, letters to the editor — and, now, myriad missives plastered over the internet — still make my skin crawl.

There is no doubt drug traffickers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran deserve to be in prison for what they have done, but to cheer on their executions is sickening.

I have heard some terrible stories from families of those whose lives have been ruined by drug addiction. I won’t pretend to understand the suffering this has caused them, nor do I dispute their right to feel that death is the only suitable punishment for those who have brought such pain to their loved ones. Perhaps in their shoes I might feel the same; I hope my beliefs are never put to such a terrible test.

But, like the case of Barlow and Chambers, so many of the citizens calling for the execution of these young men are nothing more than belligerent bystanders.

They are closely related to the crowds who gathered in the dark ages to watch public hangings, baying for blood.

“Take out the garbage,” one yells. “They should have shot them 10 years ago,” cries another. “Shooting is too good for them — their death should be long and slow,” writes another.

How can we, on the one hand, decry the barbaric beheadings of some human beings and celebrate the death by firing squad of others?

And I don’t just mean Chan and Sukumaran. They may be getting all the attention because they are Australians but the killing of any human being is abhorrent.

That it is legal in some parts of the world does not make it any the more acceptable. Would you really be able to stand there and fire at either of those two young men?

Could you have pulled that noose around Barlow’s neck? Would you be able to flick the switch on the electric chair in use in some American states?

I don’t remember a lot of the texts I read for my essay but Clarence Darrow’s impassioned argument against capital punishment made a lasting impact.

All these years later, courtesy of the internet, I can re-read at least parts of it within seconds.

The American lawyer, best known for championing the rights of the underprivileged, had agreed to take on the case of two wealthy teenagers who had killed a 14-year-old boy simply to prove their intellectual superiority.

Their crime was indefensible, then and now. But Darrow mounted a spirited defence for their lives in a Chicago courtroom in 1924.

“Your Honour stands between the past and the future,” Darrow said near the end of his closing argument.

“You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck until they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past. In doing it you are making it harder for every other boy who in ignorance and darkness must grope his way through the mazes which only childhood knows.

“In doing it you will make it harder for unborn children. You may save them and make it easier for every child that sometime may stand where these boys stand. You will make it easier for every human being with an aspiration and a vision and a hope and a fate.

“I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men.

“When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.”

Here we are, almost 91 years later, still struggling with the concept of mercy. We might argue that someone who shows no mercy to their victims does not deserve ours. But where does it end?

To paraphrase Gandhi, if we keep on taking an eye for an eye, we will all end up blind.

Legalised murder only diminishes the human race. I am grateful that it is no longer part of Australian society.

I yearn for the day when we don’t celebrate its practice in others.