Or, there is no such thing as a wrongful execution
Let's start with a few basic points. This article is written from the point of view of a Civil Authoritarian - not a fascist, not a communist, not a socialist - a Civil Authoritarian. In my view the State has primacy over the individual and is subject to no law but it's own. I reject out of hand any counter-arguments made on the basis of some mythical body of 'international law'. 'International Law' is a myth because the only supra-national body with even a remote claim to being able to enforce such law (the UN), has no supra-national legitimacy, is not recognised by any nation on Earth as its Sovereign, is incapable of enforcing any of its decisions, and is moreover utterly dependant for what resources it possesses upon the good will of one its constituents - namely, the USA.
There is no such thing as international law because no Sovereign exists to enforce it and without such a Sovereign law is not law: it's wishful thinking at best, and at worst a means for the powerful to dupe the weak and foolish.
It might be argued against me that all cultures respect life, and that there is therefore a universal moral imperative to favor life over death at every opportunity. There is also a universal condemnation of certain crimes, murder for one, and a universal insistence that crime of all kinds, and especially a crime as heinous as murder, should be punished. In the struggle between those two points of view I favor the latter and not the former. What follows is an elaboration of that sentiment.
A variety of arguments are advanced against the death penalty. I rebut the commonest below.
Perhaps the commonest of all arguments against the death penalty is the impossibilty of avoiding executing an innocent. Most who use this argument say simply that it's wrong to kill an innocent person. The slightly more subtle say it's unjust. I say that there is no such thing as a wrongful execution. This is not to say that in the history of lawful executions no innocents have ever been killed. Even on the basis of statistical probability it should be obvious to all that some innocents have been killed by State sanctioned execution. However, such innocents are not wrongfully killed by the State - they are executed in error. Since the legitimate authority of the State, whether in error or not, has sanctioned their killing, such killings are not wrongful even if according to natural justice they are unjust. They are administrative errors, a product of human fallibility, such fallibility being integral to the operation of the State simply because all of its agents are human. If the State, recognising this tendency to fallibility, institutes procedures intended to safeguard (as far as is possible) against such errors, and if these safeguards are carried out honestly, then the State has done all that can reasonably be done to ensure that no innocent person is executed in error. With that caveat in place, the accusation of wrongful execution cannot be levelled at the State, nor can it be used as an argument against the death penalty.
Almost as common is the argument that execution does not deter murder. I agree. Execution does not deter murder. However, the function of State-sanctioned execution is not deterrence, because it is fundamentally unjust to make one person the scape-goat for the future crimes of others. It is not right that I be executed to prevent you from committing a murder in the future. No, the purpose of execution is punishment: the punishment of one individual for the crimes committed by that individual. The fact that execution for murder does not deter other murderers from their crimes is no argument against the death penalty. Only fools and American Liberals imagine that it does.
I can hear some of you saying that we as a culture, a civilization, should long ago have transcended the mentality that says 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'. That while crime should be punished it's barbaric to add one killing to other killings: that life imprisonment, perhaps even solitary confinement for life, is the more civilized, the more clement option.
It's my opinion that nothing could be further from the truth. I once worked in a prison, as an adult education tutor. I had keys, I could come and go as I liked, I could leave - and still, I was horribly oppressed, horribly aware of the doors and gates that had to be traversed before I was once more outside, horribly aware of the barreness of that environment, of its always incipient violence, of the soul-destroying tedium of enforced confinement. And to me, the notion of a lifetime spent in solitary is cruel beyond imagining: I would far rather be dead and out of this world than be subject to such cruelty. In short, it's my opinion that of the two, permanent imprisonment or execution by the State, the latter is infinitely preferable to the former. Someone who fears death above everything else might not agree, of course.
The recent controversy over the death of Tookie Williams reveals a further argument against the death penalty. That, as a consequence of the excruciatingly slow yet mandatory appeals process, the man or woman who is finally executed is not the man or woman who committed the crime. In other words, that changes in the outlook of the criminal require a change in the sentence that takes cognizance of the lessons learned, the repentance of the killer.
However, no matter what changes take place in the murderer some things cannot change, now or ever again: the fact of the death or deaths for which he or she was sentenced in the first place. The fact of repentance, even when genuine, is nothing extraordinary and merits no treatment that departs from the law. It merely demonstrates that the killer has returned to the baseline of normality in our society: that murder is considered a heinous act worthy of punishment. The crime itself is not addressed by the criminal's repentance, nor do any subsequent good deeds on the part of the murderer address it. It remains outstanding, and its character as a thing worthy of punishment has not changed.
To be clement to a prisoner on death row who has exhausted his appeals without producing convincing evidence that he is not guilty is to disregard the original crime. It makes light of the fact that innocent people have been unlawfully killed, it serves as an encouragement to others to commit the same crime, it commits an injustice against the bereaved who demand satisfaction in the name of the wrongfully dead. And above and beyond all these things it brings into disrepute the name of the State, questioning its ability to enforce law, bring about justice, and maintain civil order. In other words, it calls into question the legitimate authority of the State - and for that reason alone, clemency for a criminal convicted according to due process, who has not been able to demonstrate his innocence even after a decades long appeal process, is to be denied whenever such an appeal is made.
The State ought to execute murderers. Natural justice requires that punishment be proportional to the crime. To take away the life of a killer is properly proportional to the murderer's crime where imprisonment for life is not. It ought to execute murderers since the only alternative (if imprisonment is excluded) is vigilantism and revenge-killing - which are themselves crimes of lese majeste, as well as breaks in the civil peace.
And finally the State ought to execute murderers because it alone (aside from instances of human fallibility) is the sole agency capable of dispassionate judgement, free from malice, anger and prejudice, capable of adjudicating who is to live, who is to die, and on what grounds.