Reflections on Capital Punishment
Svitak, Ivan
Apart from its intrinsic interest, the essay below has a notable history. Ivan Svitak was a leading figure in the struggle for freedom that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1968. A member of the...
...If it ever seems to us reasonable or just, we should realize that this only shows how culturally backward we are, and that a widespread prejudice must not be accepted as the legal norm...
...The existence of bases for atomic weapons— that is, for instruments of genocide—is far more dangerous for society and more criminally sadistic than any murder that is committed individually...
...The indisputable fact that murderers are a danger to society proves not that capital punishment is justified but only that society has the right to deprive the murderer permanently of the opportunity to murder, for in stance by imprisoning him for life...
...Nor do we know what man is...
...In memory of colonel Otakar Svitak, who organized the evacuation of Czechoslovak airmen to the West in 1938-40 and who was executed in Berlin on August 26, 1942...
...know only that it is entrusted to us for a So none is competent to make judgments few decades and that it ends without our about the usefulness of a human life or to knowing why...
...A member of the department of philosophy at Charles University in Prague, he delivered the material below as the last lecture in a course in philosophical anthropology, on December 10, 1966...
...These rationalizations of the abhorrence aroused by the brutality of murder take the form of arguments that seem to justify capital punishment...
...the usefulness of given forms of existence...
...A man's life must not depend upon the fact that his death may be expedient from some point of view that is apt to change, for a change of opinion cannot bring him back to life...
...it is a paradoxical affirmation of human freedom...
...Respect for the fundamental rights of man is the central political question of our time...
...It is the duty of a humanist to demonstrate that such acts of power are in fact acts of violence against man and to make it impossible for them to appear rational, ethically justifiable, or moral...
...make decisions about death...
...Society pretends that the criminal bears the whole responsibility himself, though no man ever is alone responsible...
...A hundred years ago death sentences were still imposed for stealing, and two hundred years ago for witchcraft...
...The paradox lies in the fact that we are applying an extremely humanist principle (life for the murderer) in a world where human life is sacrificed, with no concern for humanism, in wars waged to deprive nations as well as individuals of their freedom, and in the liquidation of whole social strata or political groups...
...Executions are murders perpetrated by the state against individuals...
...The freedom of man to choose between doing good or evil undoubtedly exists, and the murderer can choose not to murder...
...Life imprisonment is a sufficient protection even in extreme cases...
...But in fact that happens only of Western culture...
...at stake is the observance of humanist principles in a given state, the observance of human rights...
...Breaking a law the mentally deficient...
...Ivan Svitak was a leading figure in the struggle for freedom that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1968...
...he cannot choose his biological background or the society in which he is to live...
...therefore social danger is in no case a valid argument for capital punishment...
...It is the primitive principle of an eye for an eye, which is contrary to common sense because it would mean that a man who inflicts a physical injury on another should be punished by the infliction of a similar injury upon his person...
...They do not realize that the execution does not advance justice but only helps the state to calm public opinion...
...Apart from its intrinsic interest, the essay below has a notable history...
...Only those prepared to perform executions in the name of society should be entitled to vote for death...
...No people, institutions, movements, or states are competent to decide what the purpose of life is and no one therefore has the right to take life...
...For insofar as man is the product of biological, social, and psychological influences, his responsibility is never total...
...But the defense of humanism and of the fundamental rights of man has always been a paradox, because it has always rejected any social order that restricts man's freedom to live...
...The supporters of capital punishment should logically demand that executions be held in public, to enhance the deterrent effect...
...Among all those who are executed, every other man is innocent...
...third, the open conflict with the humanist tradition and the unambiguous commandment, "Thou shalt not kill...
...The argument that a man should be held responsible for the evil he has committed appears rational...
...HUMAN LIFE IS INVIOLABLE...
...The state imposes the supreme penaltydeath— for crimes committed against society itself and it supposedly acts for those who attain the very foundations of communal life...
...The man who gives his assent to an execution must have the courage to stand by the side of the executioner, otherwise he does not know what he is talking about...
...ple, including capital punishment, cannot be Faith in the inviolability and meaning of justified by invoking higher value...
...The modern concept of man is qualifiedly deterministic...
...If certain individuals, institutions, movements, and states act in this way, it is alone by virtue of their power, not on the basis of any right...
...During the brief interval of relative freedom in Czechoslovakia, Svitak published this essay in the popular journal Student (July 1968...
...share it, however guilty they may be...
...All these assumptions have been proved false, not only in theoretical speculation but in legal practice as well...
...The principle of a life for a life can be defended only if one is also prepared to defend the principles of the legal codes of ancient Babylon—a hand for a hand, a leg for a leg, etc...
...Translated by JARMILA VELTRUSKY...
...When there is a conflict of values, it may The specific human person and the in-seem that the death penalty is justified and violability of his life are the supreme values reasonable...
...Human life can never justifiably be the object of manipulation...
...People approve the execution of brutal murderers because they subjectively feel the need for a certain elementary justice and because they are afraid...
...The possibility to choose evil is connected with the anthropological basis of human existence...
...States that tolerate missile bases in their territories, from which the mass destruction of whole populations can be launched, have no right to sentence anyone to death, not even a notorious sadist...
...Monsieur le bourreau, encore un moment...
...This cruel procedure would merely put into effect the principle of revenge that is followed by the judges who pronounce death sentences...
...moments in history the conviction may be Once human life is judged from a utiliexpressed in different words...
...The Paradox of Capital Punishment THE APPROVAL OF EXECUTIONS is an expression of the paradox arising from the contradiction between abstract reasoning and concrete practice...
...Immediately after the lecture, the course was banned by the authorities...
...Man as an individual gives the state the right to administer public affairs, not to hold sway over people's lives...
...Either he is in an abnormal emotional state which diminishes his responsibility, or he is the cold instrument of the abnormality of which he himself is a victim...
...Man can choose evil precisely because he is man...
...The supporters of does not invalidate it...
...The greatest number of death sentences has been pronounced not on the grounds of vicious murder but for political reasons...
...Summum ius summa iniuria...
...second, the impossibility of repairing an eventual mistake...
...they would not the usefulness of life as such, but only about be human...
...The practice of execution is shameful, regardless of the fact that there are things even more shameful than the execution of murderers, for instance, governments of murderers...
...There is no such thing as a rational argument in favor of the death penalty...
...They are different in quality from the killing of one individual by another, because the state is supposed to act as the guarantor of moral standards...
...Society always shares in the murderer's guilt...
...A murderer is always abnormal...
...yet in spite of their conviction that the death penalty is a deterrent, this is not done...
...This abnormality has always been partly caused by society...
...Just as we look after mentally retarded children and cripples and do not throw them from the Tarpeian rock, so we have an obligation to provide similar treatment for the murderer who is a man crippled in his humanity and capacity for love...
...The state, however, guarantees the social values of its citizens and when it kills, it thereby justifies killing and raises this immoral act to the status of a moral norm...
...are capable of providing a final answer to We do not know what life is...
...REFLECTIONS ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT Capital punishment is inflicted most often not upon brutal sadists—as the public assumes— but upon those very people who protest against oppression and wars and who try to protect society from it...
...The Absurdity of Capital Punishment CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS INHUMANE, irrational, and immoral...
...Every murder is an abnormal act and is usually the expression of an abnormal situation...
...But capital punishment holds him absolutely responsible...
...The crimes of society against specific people have always been committed with impunity, accompanied by the stirring-up of mass hatred, and were presented as a service to the country...
...capital punishment are inconsistent, because IVAN SVITAK their arguments can be used to demand the liquidation of any individuals they deem socially useless...
...The absolute penalty could be justly carried out REFLECTIONS ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT only if applied to an absolutely free and absolutely responsible person...
...The murderer represents an aberrant form of human existence...
...The irrevocability of the death penalty, which makes it impossible to repair the fairly frequent judicial errors, is a decisive argument against capital punishment...
...Every execution represents an abuse of the power of the state against society...
...We do not know exactly why one man becomes a criminal and another does not...
...The assumption that capital punishment acts as a deterrent is disproved by the fact that the crime rate is no higher in states that do not have capital punishment than in those that do...
...This ories put forward to justify putting a man faith must embrace even those who do not to death are wrong...
...The thelife is inherent in human behavior...
...In fact, capital punishment is uncommensurable with the antihumanist practice of war, and with the suppression of freedom and of ideas...
...the potential murderer is not deterred by the knowledge that he runs the risk of losing his life...
...Changing the barbarous legal norms is not simply a matter for theoreticians of law...
...they also are irreconcilable with certain obvious facts dealt with in criminology...
...The social danger the criminal represents is not a reason to execute him...
...Man is free only within certain limits, which we cannot precisely define...
...The data about the biological, social and psychological (psychopathological) determinants of human behavior are rare in comparison with the scientists' knowledge of nature...
...An individual's decision to kill, for whatever reason, is not thereby binding society to such moral norms, because the acts of the individual have no generally binding force and do not constitute a norm of behavior...
...If such people As we do not know the ultimate meaning or bodies could exist, they would be an exof human existence, we cannot reason about ception to the human order...
...A death sentence is just as abnormal as a murder...
...Even when murder is committed with premeditation, the abnormality of the criminal must be taken into account...
...He cannot be held responsible for these aspects of his life...
...By executing the murderer, society rids itself of its share of responsibility for the social side of his personality...
...There are only imperfect rationalizations of an affective reaction to human brutality, in other words, badly rationalized emotions...
...No state has ever been authorized by anybody to execute people, or to kill ideas...
...The individual guarantees only his own values...
...The principle that the punishment should be proportionate to the crime assumes that whoever takes a life should lose his own...
...The paradox of noble principles and brutal practices makes it appear that to uphold the rational principle of the murderer's right to live is to violate the principles of practical "justice...
...The Problematic Character of Capital Punishment CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS AS BARBAROUS a practice as torture, witch-burning, and political trials of innocent people...
...Once the state begins to usurp the right to decide whether its citizens are to live or die, it extends its authority to the detriment of the individual...
...Everyone has the right to life...
...Executions of the guilty and the innocent alike have met with approbation, because the appeal to man's aggressiveness and sadism is demagogically effective...
...Society should deal with murderers as it deals with other aberrant forms of life...
...As human life itself is the paramount Therefore, it is wrong to look for reasons value, so the deliberate destruction of peoto justify capital punishment...
...scientists have not reached agreement about the extent to which criminality or criminal tendencies are connected with biological and social heredity...
...The author is now living in the United States.—ED...
...The proportion of a man's responsi bility and irresponsibility varies in different situations: man is at once free and unfree...
...Public approval of the execution carried out by the state—often of innocent people— is the approval of a crime...
...To reject capital punishment is to reject the society that requires it...
...Man may be a combination of hereditary predispositions, social relationships, and his own responsibility...
...Human progress and historical development are achieved always through protest against current practices...
...Generations of murdered revolutionaries, reformers, thinkers, and political victims are a permanent argument against capital punishment...
...This conviction appears because a secondary and subordinate value, unmistakably in all the great systems of ideas such as the interest of society, is given precein the humanist tradition, though at different dence over the central value: man himself...
...We the question of the meaning of human life...
...Evident and clearly proved facts provide no arguments in favor of the death penalty...
...Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations...
...They start from the assumption that the murderer is a danger to society, that the punishment should be proportionate to the crime and act as a deterrent, and that the murderer is mentally responsible and morally accountable for his action...
...It is given to No persons, institutions, or movements us, but it does not belong to us alone...
...But his inclination toward evil, his "death IVAN SVITAK loving character," deprives him of the freedom of choice, just as a "life-loving character" makes a man act altruistically...
...We do not sufficiently know the biological structure of man and that of his mentality to be able to judge how responsible he is at the time he commits a murder...
...Society empowers the organs of state to regulate the way the citizens live together, but not to decide if they are to live or die...
...It is a paradox of present-day humanism that—in a society familiar with mass murder and the execution of the innocent, and with the preparation for mass genocide—the humanist has to defend a murderer's right to live...
...In a world prepared for total death and for the extermination of whole nations, the defense of humanist principles, including the demand for the abolition of capital punishment, is a paradox hard to reconcile with practice...
...If it reacts to murder by murdering the murderer, it is responding on the moral level of the murderer...
...but it can apply only to normal people...
...Faith in the righteousness of burning witches and of killing one's political opponents was also shared by large numbers of people, yet it was never justified...
...Opposition to capital punishment is part of man's resistance to war, to the restriction of freedom and the violation of human rights...
...Throughout history, the very conceptions of crime, guilt, and punishment are bound up with changing social conditions and transient opinions...
...But what the state considers a fundamental infringement upon the social order is variable and depends on what ideas are generally accepted at a given time...
...Madame du Barry, under the guillotine...
...It is not for judges alone but for judges and citizens together to bring about a change in judicial practice...
...The punishment would soon disappear and cease to be imposed if the judges and juries who have made mistakes were liable to execution themselves...
...And yet, while it is taken for granted that a man who is sick—that is, biologically or psychologically abnormal—is not legally responsible, a man who is socially abnormal is held to be responsible...
...tarian point of view, it may appear to be The principle that human life is inviolable expendable not only in the case of murderers indeed is violated through wars and murders, but also in the case of the incurably ill and but it still remains the norm...
...The death sentence is always a disproportionate punishment...
...Human life is not a process of putting moral, legal, or ideological principles into effect...
...Even if these above-mentioned arguments in favor of capital punishment were theoretically valid, there would remain at least three practical arguments against it: first, the recorded cases of miscarried justice, of judicial murder and gross errors made even in the best legal systems, especially when circumstantial evidence is admitted...
...The principle that the punishment should be proportionate to the crime does not demand a life for a life...
...Man lives by dealing with situations as they arise in a constantly changing system of dilemmas, in which he cannot choose freely...
Vol. 18 • December 1971 • No. 6
