A culture of life means sparing the lives of even the worst criminals

Remorse

Following news that Brandon Bernard has died by lethal injection, I thought it necessary to re-up this piece from 2019 explaining my opposition to the death penalty.

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The Trump Justice Department this week reversed what I had hoped would be an enduring trend supported by both Democratic and Republican administrations.

The U.S. government will for the first time since 2003 resume executing death row inmates whose cases fall under federal jurisdiction, starting first with five men convicted of murdering children, Attorney General William Barr announced Thursday.

This is the wrong direction. We must defend all life, from conception to natural death. This ideal, which applies to the unborn as well as even the most vicious criminal, is essential if we are to establish order in a world that favors chaos.

“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the President,” Barr said in a statement.

He added, “Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding. The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

The guilty verdicts for the five men slated for execution were reached by duly selected juries and upheld by judges. The Justice Department has no authority to overrule these decisions, nor should it. The real work of moving America away from the death penalty lies in reforming state legislatures, not in hoping for an unlawful intervention from the federal government. That said, five scheduled executions are a lot. Between 1988, when the federal death penalty was restored, and 2019, the federal government executed only three defendants, with the last one being in 2003. For the Justice Department to get back into the business of executing prisoners with an opening salvo of five terminations is dismaying, to say the least.

Former President Barack Obama did the right thing in 2014 when he instructed the Justice Department to review capital punishment and lethal injections. The review effectively halted all federal executions, earning death row inmates in the federal prison system a momentary reprieve. Opponents of capital punishment knew too well that the halt was most likely temporary, but a temporary halt was better than nothing. But now the Bureau of Prisons has completed its review, and federal executions are back online in a big, big way.

Barr’s Addendum instructs BOP Director Hugh Hurwitz specifically to move forward with the executions of the following five men: Daniel Lewis Lee, Lezmond Mitchell, Wesley Ira Purkey, Alfred Bourgeois, and Dustin Lee Honken. Four of these men killed multiple people, including women and children. The grisly details make it even worse. Bourgeois molested, tortured, and killed his own two-year-old daughter.

“Each of these inmates has exhausted their appellate and post-conviction remedies, and currently no legal impediments prevent their executions, which will take place at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana,” the Justice Department announced Thursday. “Additional executions will be scheduled at a later date.”

These men committed heinous crimes. Their offenses cry out for justice. But the preemptive ending of a life is not the right response.

It is true that current and previous death row inmates have shown no sign of improvement or remorse. But some have! If we want a culture that embraces the good and the beautiful, we must spare life rather than end it prematurely, thus robbing both the damaged person and society of the collective goods of remorse, compassion, and reconciliation. And to rob even the guilty of natural life is to rob them of the opportunity for contrition and redemption.

This is to say nothing of the cruelty and suffering that our executions inflict on the guilty. It is to say nothing of the fact that capital punishment is an inherently corruptible system open to human error and abuse.

This is more than just a matter of asking that the guilty be allowed an indefinite amount of time to consider their crimes. This is a matter of whether we believe man is capable of redemption or whether he is an animal, hopelessly shackled to his appetites and habits. A culture that chooses freedom chooses free will. It chooses the belief that man can change, even the most brutal murderer. Further, at the core of the anti-death penalty position is the belief that the premature death of a human being is a fundamentally disordered act or, at the very least, unnatural. Responding to murder, rape, or torture with the similarly chaotic act of execution is to answer disorder with disorder. There is no joy or peace in that. Only death.

We can argue about this in circles, as many have for many, many years. For now, though, I can say only that the Justice Department’s Thursday Addendum greatly saddens me as it is a move away from embracing life.