This blog post is about how we argue against the death penalty.

Years ago, I was a part of a historical theology reading group. We were reading texts from the scholastics—probably Aquinas—when we observed a troubling pattern: in favor of some proposition, the author would bring out two or three really solid arguments. And then he would keep going: he would give an increasing number of arguments of decreasing quality, until they were simply nonsensical. Clearly the author knew which arguments were the better ones, since he gave them first. But he included the foolish ones too. It made no sense to us then, and it still makes no sense to me now, why someone would bother to advance an invalid argument to support a statement that he knew on other grounds to be true.

Here is why I am opposed to the death penalty: Jesus Christ teaches us to shun violence and retaliation. If I intend to follow that in my private conduct, it would be inconsistent of me to advocate for the government to take a different course of action on my behalf.

(Someone will suggest that governments have different rights and responsibilities from individuals. I regard that as a bold and daring statement. I would welcome any argument for it from first principles or from Scripture.)

I feel obliged to cite my sources. Hermeneutics is tricky, and some passages of the Bible are unclear. But this is about as perspicuous as any communication can ever be:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:38-48; NIV)

It’s of course of a piece with the entire Bible: over and over, God redeems rather than destroying.

Those preliminaries aside, I was dismayed last week [see note below] by the furor surrounding Alabama’s use of a novel form of execution, nitrogen asphyxiation. Article after article, editorial after editorial, focused on what a cruel and unusual death this was: how inhumane, how painful, how agonizing to watch.

You can review the facts around nitrogen asphyxiation for yourself. The reason that pure nitrogen gas is dangerous—even when someone is not trying to execute you with it—is that it is painless. There is no sensation of suffocation, and so people just pass out and die. This is how beloved family pets are euthanized. Nitrogen asphyxiation has been used for euthanizing humans. It’s about as painless as it gets. Granted, this man was being killed; he understandably held his breath to delay that. I suspect, but not not know, that the death convulsions were greater than those that would be witnessed with a lethal injection, because part of the cocktail of drugs used in lethal injection is a muscle relaxant. I do not believe there are grounds to believe that he was conscious for very long after he started inhaling the gas. I think there is every reason to believe that nitrogen asphixiation is about as painless a method of execution as can be devised.

(I sometimes remark that, as a result of a curious alignment of the political stars, people who are predisposed to believe that euthanasia is painless are also predisposed to believe that execution can never be so.)

Nor do I believe that many people who have thought about it would have serious objection to nitrogen asphyxiation as a method of execution, granted the assumption that executions will take place. The strategy seems to be to play up the risks and uncertainty around any method of execution—picking them off one by one, until the government is forced to leave people alive.

Politically, that may very well be the most effective course of action; I don’t know.

Morally and philosophically, it’s like nails on a chalkboard.

If it’s wrong to kill people, why quibble over the details? Does one sentence an axe murderer more severely because he used a dull axe?

I wrote that much in February, and then stopped writing. The topic has tugged at my attention in the months since, but I haven’t had the presence of mind to finish the essay. The vexing question is, why did people keep making these ridiculous arguments against nitrogen asphyxiation? I can think of several reasons:

  • Perhaps they’re just not very well-informed about the dangers of nitrogen; maybe they just assumed it would be painful because it is a new method.
  • Perhaps they’re not very intelligent, and feel that by arguing against a particular method of execution, they sincerely believe they are advancing the cause of abolishing the death penalty generally.
  • Perhaps they’re not very morally astute, and believe that by advancing an argument (albeit unsuccessful) about the painfulness of the execution method, they’re making a moral argument against the death penalty.
  • Perhaps they understand the facts and the nature of the arguments, but instead chose to make an appeal to emotion, in order to garner more support for their cause among the less-educated.

(And, in a gesture to bipartisanship, let me acknowledge that similarly fallacious reasoning is common enough in the other wing of the pro-life movement: the anti-abortion movement. There are not infrequent appeals to fetal pain. But of course the question at hand is whether a fetus is a person. If it is a person, it would be wrong to destroy it even if its death were painless; if it is not a person… well, even in slaughtering animals, society sort of draws a line at what can be considered a reasonable way to slaughter a cow, and then just stops talking about it.)

There is a maxim that one should never attribute to malice what can reasonably be attributed to incompetence. That suggests that I assume it’s one of the first three, and leave it at that. Option four is a more cynical conclusion, but is not for that reason incorrect. (Making a disingenuous argument is not quite malicious, but it’s not far off either.)

But there is a fifth possibility that has been tugging at my mind. I can’t prove it, but I can’t quite discard it either.

Could it be that the moral foundations of our society have eroded to the point where it’s not actually possible to find reasonable grounds for not executing people? People in the Judeo-Christian tradition can make their intrareligious arguments, but those arguments are presumably not of interest to nonbelievers. Can it be that our public ethical discussions actually no longer allow us to construct moral arguments, to put into words the moral impulses that our guts provide?

That would be a very sad state to be, but I suspect that something along those lines is actually what is going on. People are people: their moral senses can never be completely dulled. In the back of everyone’s mind, when we hear of an execution, there is a sinking feeling arising from our awareness that revenge is a mean business, even if we have arranged things so that the state pulls the trigger. But if we don’t have a common moral vocabulary, then those moral intuitions can only escape as inarticulate grunts.