Death Penalty - A Deterrent?

A deterrent is a means to prevent the recurrence of an action or a behaviour. So, does the death penalty in a rarest of rare case actually serve this purpose? I think it is imperative to ponder over this question amid the jubilation at the perceived purveyance of justice. The declared goal of deterrence, to my mind, is but an attempt to mount the high horse of hypocrisy or to cruise over conflict in comforting delusion: what else could be said of a zealous endeavor to abate an offense that is largely in check and hence, remotely probable?

Let us consider some death penalties from history to illustrate the legendary, perhaps mythical, efficacy of the punitive action. Remember the burning at the stakes for heresy and witchcraft? Remember Joan of Arc? Here, condemning the convict would have certainly been a deterrent. The other heretics - of whom there were undeniably many as they only had to hold a view deviant from that of the Church - would have had to take their own congregations underground, and would , for the sake of their own safety, be more guarded in indoctrinating even seemingly inclined individuals in the ways of inquiry and reason. To have someone pliant enough to part with the identities of the heretics on the rack of holy blackmail privy to your variances of opinion would be nothing short of lining up to be lynched on the stake. Moreover, provided the proselyte proved brave enough in the face of maledictions, even the greatest believer in sacrifice for a cause wouldn't want to lead the merely enthusiastic to their graves. Depriving an intellectual challenge to the Church of its desired ammunition of minds was precisely the kind of tactic a commander would employ when cutting off the supplies to the enemy. And that the Church resorted to the tactic testifies to a worrying percentage of the populace being predisposed to questioning the tenets they were burdened under, necessitating a deterrent. Death penalty, in this case, was an effective deterrent that bulwarked the ecclesiastical domination.

A similar example would be the hanging of Bhagat Singh, Sukh Dev and Raj Guru - as would be lethal afflictions imposed on others guilty of supposed or actual treason. Again, examine the circumstances. Lala Lajpat Rai was dead, and the youth who had added the dimension of extremism to the freedom movement -understandably frustrated at the protracted non-violent struggle to evict the aliens off the Indian tract - were retaliating with the very arms the British had used to corner the country. That the press was dedicating sufficient column inches to such affronts to the Crown , albeit largely in outrage, meant the idea of insurgency could become quite a pernicious contagion. It was already being successfully pollinated via speeches, pamphlets and  posters.  The idea, the carriers and a bevy of boys and girls liable to be infected with the radical urge made the culling of the sources of the idea essential - the head of the raging bull had to be severed to keep it from trampling its targets. As, in the case of heresy, this tapered the recruitment to such bands, in part by creating a dearth of leaders and icons as also by instilling fear of the fate that awaited anyone who chose to bunk with such radical individuals. Strike two for the logic behind leveraging death penalty, though the British might have erred in factoring in the inspiration the martyrs would represent, undermining the death penalty's terror. 

The third example I'm reminded of is the democratization of France, which had the Guillotine lick the blood of anyone given to grandiosity. The royals, who many would argue had lost their heads long before, had the blade drop on their napes and forcing itself through the flesh to meet the base of the contraption's frame with a vengeance that mirrored the wrath of the French who had been oppressed and impoverished. But, the blade would not stop. It would become the choice assassin of the majority whenever they chose to rid their society of opposing voices. Robespierre, a champion of the French during the revolution, would himself bow at the Guillotine for not bowing to the public pulse. Homogenization by hammering down the kinks is one way to build a consensus-based democracy, and the French had succeeded. And the number of heads that rolled will point to an opposition that was sizable, warranting elimination. Vive peine de mort!

So, death penalty as a deterrent is reasonably effective. But, its efficacy depends largely on the numbers who are to be warned off attempting the act that invites the death penalty. The rarity of an offense, I suppose, would be determined by the potential in anyone of us to commit the crime in the prevalence of the accompanying circumstances. If a case is deemed to be rarest of rare - which suggests that the likelihood of the offense being reenacted is, by definition, low and points to the possibility that the crime is a freak macabre event that might not even have been planned and executed - who is it that we are trying to scare into sanity?

Am I saying that the death penalty is not an option? No. It would make more sense to sanction the punishment for crimes perpetrated by those with aspirations off life and ambitions for the future, prepared to invoke their feral instincts for the realization of their desires. Avarice - rampant, as hinted at by the spate of scam stories sullying our air waves and newsprint - could probably be deterred with the death penalty, for the felons' desire to live and luxuriate in a future he has seized by whatever means necessary is what their motive hinges on. In fact, death penalty, or any other scourge, would be successful as a deterrent only where the crime is motivated by gain - however horrific it may be, machinated and executed mercilessly, but mindfully and meticulously. Only a person who is in possession of his faculties can you hope to keep from employing them for nefarious utility, even in the face of the enticing opportunity that has presented itself. And however the huge the number of people on the edge of this entrapping enchantment, all of them would not be possible perpetrators of a rarest of rare offense.   

Then, what could be done with the convicts in the rarest of rare cases? That we seek death penalty for them should mean that we are convinced that they are beyond remorse, reform and rehabilitation - abilities we would associate with anyone we deem a functional human being. Whatever the advances in neuropsychology, we still cannot be sure, I suppose, of the physiological basis, if any, for such a psychological impairment. If and when we could, I believe we'd be obliged to sympathize with the perpetrators as we do with convicts who successfully plead insanity. But, until then, we will be wary of these egregiously inhuman convicts as potentially the greatest threat to the Utopian society we want to live in. I would like to contend that this is the basis of our demand for the death penalty for these offenders - a combination of disdain, distrust and deadening dread. We seek their death not as a deterrent to others, but as the only inevitable way of preserving and protecting our vision of society - an extermination. 

Assuming an extermination is defensible - the greatest good of the greatest number often dwarfs the scruples of a few - and given the headway we have made in organ transplant, could we not harvest the organs of these condemned men and women to rekindle the life in a sufferer's struggling existence? What we hope to do, after all, is to foster life. Not monopolize death.