SANCTITY OF LIFE

Can one support the death penalty and in the same breath claim to preserve the sanctity of life?

I don’t expect any disagreement if I say, humans are different from animals in that we possess an ‘awareness’ (‘sentient’ is the term often used to describe this sense of awareness, many refer to it as ‘reason’) that places us at a higher plane of existence than animals. As much as Trooper, my French Bulldog, is as smart a dog as he can be and is an enjoyable company because of his affinity and loyalty to me, he would not have the level of ‘awareness’ that a fellow human being would have no matter how dumb that individual may be.

The sense of awareness that we all have as human beings, which I wouldn’t hesitate to call, Soul, is what endows us with the sanctity of life. Being human has the benefit of the sanctity of life. Reading this, if you’re a Christian, may cause you to reel in your pants right now because you would say that the image of God and the fact that we’re created by God, and nothing else, give life the character of holiness or sanctity! You may even be starting to cite Bible verses here. Relax! I’m talking of the same thing. I was trying to simplify it, but now you have made we write more sentences just to assuage your religious sensitivities. Jeesh!

Where was I before I was rudely interrupted?

The soul is what marks us out from animals. And it is important for us to see every human being as having the sanctity of life to avoid treating others or being treated ourselves like animals.

Killing another human being (without valid reason, like self-defense) is beyond the pale as it violates the sanctity of life that we all want to preserve. But does killing another human being make the killer lose his own (let’s just say the bad guy is male) sanctity of life?

According to supporters of the death penalty, when somebody kills another human being the killer, in turn, needs to be killed as punishment to preserve the sanctity of life. They would say, too, that punishment of the killer and compensation to the victim must be in kind. It would seem that anything short would not be enough recompense for the life taken away.

For the supporters of the death penalty sanctity of life is only good until one person takes the life of another human being. Killers can be killed because they have, presumably, lost all claims to being human by taking away the life of another person.

Here are my problems with this thinking:

How is the sanctity of life preserved when another human life is taken by the death penalty? It is totally absurd to say that killing the killer preserves the human need to promote and preserve the sanctity of life. Let’s grant that the killing of the original victim violates his sanctity of life. But if we’re going to be consistent about it, doesn’t the killing of the killer also violate the sanctity of life of the killer as a human being?

The death penalty does one thing. It accepts the notion that some of us who have taken the life of another have become sub-humans and thus have lost any claim to the sanctity of life and can now, in turn, be killed without consequences. This is the only way that the death penalty can be meted out without decimating the sanctity of life, that is, killers need to be turned into sub-humans to remove their right to life.

Supporters of the death penalty would like society to have the prerogative to be able to reclassify killers from human beings to animals, which is the only way the death penalty can be justified without conceding that such punishment also violates the sanctity of life.

But nobody can really turn off the humanity of a person, no matter how heinous his action has been. A mango will always be a mango even if turns rotten. You may not want to eat a rotten mango, but, sorry, it remains a mango despite your feelings about it.

Holding on to the sanctity of life and at the same time supporting the death penalty doesn’t make sense, unless we make some arbitrary decision that those who have killed another human being have descended, by some dint of fiction, into a sub-human state. And who is to make this decision that a guilty person has passed into an animal state? The justice system that everybody concedes is flawed? Imposing the death penalty is humans playing God, and flawed humans at that!

There is danger in accepting the idea that we can arbitrarily switch off a man’s (let’s just stick with males this time) innate nature, or, as I described it, soul, and turn him into an animal because he has killed another person.

This is a slippery slope because if we give in to our penchant to dehumanize others who we feel are undeserving, where do we stop?

Many supporters of the death penalty would also take away the sanctity of life of, aside from killers, rapists, drug pushers, plunderers, even if there are no lives lost in these crimes no matter how dastardly they may be. This is not a hypothetical situation because we have seen this before in Europe, Rwanda, Srebrenica and elsewhere where genocide was committed against millions of people just because they belong to a certain race.

We don’t even have to wander far in geography and history. In this country, the Philippines, we are being told that people connected with illegal drugs are not humans and can be disposed of at will if they resist arrest or by vigilante groups, who are, as reports would have it, also run by the police.

The death penalty is also a final act where no rehabilitation or redemption is even allowed for those who have committed a grievous mistake against the society but have seen the errors of their ways. Everybody should be given a chance at rehabilitation and redemption even if they need to be incarcerated for the rest of their productive lives. Further, because of the imperfect justice system the death penalty doesn’t allow mistakes in the system to be rectified. That many innocent people have died by capital punishment because of the flawed system should give us a pause about imposing the death penalty.

Why do we lust for blood when we can punish killers and others in a manner that would preserve our humanity? The death penalty is a serious threat to the sanctity of life of us all.

Even assuming that we can re-classify killers as animals, sub-humans are not necessarily less deserving of life. We just don’t kill animals even for food. We treat them humanely providing them legal protection against cruelty. Under the law, the animals we eat are limited to certain species. Eating animals outside of the list is liable for the crime of cruelty to animals. Vegans would even assert that all killings of animals are cruel. Our societies acknowledge now that sub-human species also deserve to live.

The elephant in the room is in everybody’s mind that may be familiar with the violent story of the God of the Old Testament. If the death penalty is so bad, why would God impose it? And he imposed it on the most trivial of offenses, like violating the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2) or children dishonoring their parents (Exodus 21:17).

This is a good question and would require a full treatment elsewhere. But suffice it to say that God in the Old Testament is intent in preserving a nation to accomplish his plan of redeeming and claiming back his creation that has gone astray. There are plenty of sick things that happened in the Old Testament in the process of God going about his plan that are hard to explain, and his seeming penchant for violence is one of them.

Here is another one. Jesus came from the family of David who came through the lineage of Perez (Matthew 1) who, in turn, was born from the incestuous relationship via prostitution between Judah and his daughter-in-law, Tamar (Genesis 28). The Savior of the world was born from a scandalous situation in the Old Testament. Does that mean that incest and prostitution are not really evil because God seemed to have employed them in bringing forth the Messiah through the nation of Israel? You can make your own conclusions.

The point, however, is that the violence of God, including his seeming penchant for killing people (remember the genocide and infanticide he ordered in Deuteronomy 7) in the Old Testament is hard to explain. There are books that have attempted to do so. But one cannot champion the death penalty “because God has done so” but gloss over the other violent things that God has also done in the Old Testament. Those who support the death penalty on the basis of God’s explicit commands to his chosen people in the Old Testament cannot also be selective on the crimes that they think deserve the death penalty. God has commanded capital punishment on many offenses and supporters of the death penalty on the basis of the Old Testament cannot just pick and choose from the offenses that God said the death penalty should be imposed. If you propose that God is pro-death penalty, then you should stand with him all the way!

The Old Testament and its literal reading can easily turn our brains into a pretzel. But the good thing is that Jesus has clarified all this in his life, death and resurrection. He is the full manifestation of God and God’s mouthpiece in our time (Hebrews 1:1-3).

Jesus has raised love as the foundation of the Christian faith. He told Christians to imitate him and love their enemies even to the point of death (Ephesians 5:1-2)! It is hard to say we’re following Jesus if we agree to kill anyone, even if they have made grievous mistakes, including the killing of another human being. Jesus must filter everything we read in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. Not all that we read in the Bible has equal value. This is a mouthful to say, but it is true. Jesus should be the final filter of our reading of the Bible. It would be hard to operationalize what Jesus said and how he lived and treated others, like his lesson on loving enemies, by supporting the death penalty. There is no clearer definition of an enemy than somebody who has disrupted our society by killing another person and from whom we all have to be protected, and who we can easily dismiss as an animal. Jesus enjoins us to love that dastardly fellow, not kill him!

Jesus is the ultimate champion for the sanctity of life of all human beings even if society feels like treating some of us as less than humans and would deserve the death penalty.

We need to support Human Rights for all!

A child cries beside the coffin of her father,
who is alleged victim of drug-related killing.
Photo by Daniel Berehulak/NYTimes

I heard it again the other day. 

Someone pointedly asked somebody, who has expressed disgust over extra judicial killings, “Why are you more concerned about the human rights of addicts and pushers than the human rights of their victims?”

If you’re concerned over EJKs and have expressed misgivings about how the government of Mr. Duterte is conducting the War on Drugs, you might have been asked this question or have seen it posted on Facebook and the question could have, for a minute, stopped you on your tracks.

Well, don’t be!

First of all, this question assumes a false dichotomy making us choose between two perfectly valid and congruent propositions: on the one hand, the human rights of the EJK victims, and on the other, the human rights of victims of crimes committed by drug addicts and pushers.

Don’t accept the dichotomy! None exists because these two propositions are not contradictory or mutually exclusive. We should all be concerned about the human rights of all people. So, don’t let that question trap you, just reject it as a fallacy!

Reject also the false assumption that by speaking against EJKs you are less concerned about the human rights of victims. That shouldn’t be necessarily true as I’m sure all of us would like the justice system to work for all crime victims. Who wouldn’t want police officers, prosecutors and judges to do their job and rid our communities of crimes and criminals? We all do and those who would say otherwise are making an unwarranted presumption against us.

“If what you say is true,” you might ask, “why do many people speak of human rights only of EJK victims and remain silent on the human rights of crime victims?”

This question is a close cousin of the first question we discussed above. This second question represents a technique, called ‘red herring,’ which tries to divert attention from the issue at hand by bringing up a totally different matter that may not have real connection to the original issue. The idea is to create diversion and confusion and avoid tackling head on the matter at hand.

This diversionary technique is often used in detective stories to create suspense and excitement on the final outcome of the story. If you’re married or have ever been in a relationship, I’m sure that you’ve employed this technique at least once to divert the discussion from a topic where you are losing to your partner by raising a different issue. Come on, admit it!

If the issue at hand is EJKs, why bring up the matter of the purported rights of the victims of druggies? Justice for crime victims is an important issue, but it shouldn’t deflect attention from the discussions on EJKs. In other words, even if druggies commit heinous crimes, and only some and not all of them have done so, the question of attaining justice for their victims is not a valid justification for the violation of the human rights of the suspects or accused. Offenders are entitled to due process as much as their victims are entitled to justice and compensation for the damages inflicted on them. Each issue occupies a side of the same coin.

Secondly, it would be an unwarranted generalization to speak of “victims of drug addicts and pushers” because not all of them have committed heinous crimes or have victimized others to support, or as a result of, their involvement in illegal drugs.

For sure, some drug addicts and pushers have committed grave atrocities. But there is no data to show that ALL 6,000 plus killed over the last six months on drug-related cases have actually committed heinous crimes.

How many among the EJK victims were also wanted by the police for murder, rape, robbery, or other atrocities? Many of these victims did not have any standing warrants for any heinous crime.

Many people applaud the death of every EJK victim falsely equating each death as the demise of a murderer, rapist, robber or other type of criminals. Not all EJK victims were heinous criminals, and it is absurd to lump them all up under this category.

In fact, the vast majority of EJK victims appeared to be poor. They might have been involved in illegal drugs but they were not heinous criminals. And this War on Drugs so far has been directed at poor communities. Have you heard of EJKs in posh villages where many big drug laboratories had been discovered in the past and many prominent residents had been arrested as drug pushers? None!

But, again, you might ask, “Shouldn’t we be concerned about the victims of crimes committed by druggies even if not all EJK deaths represent the demise of heinous criminals?”

For sure, we should be concerned about victims of heinous crimes whether or not committed by drug addicts or pushers!

We will not and cannot abandon the human rights of victims. This is beyond question!

But here is what we should keep in mind when this subject comes up.

The entire justice system (law enforcement, prosecution, judicial trial and appeals, correction and penalties) is geared towards the protection of the rights of victims, to compensate their loss and redress grievances, and to penalize offenders.

We call this the Rule of Law, which is to say that there is due process in getting criminals off the streets, making them pay for the damages they have caused, and ensuring that convicted criminals serve appropriate jail time and/or pay fines. This can be complicated at times. But all this legal rigmarole is intended to achieve justice for crime victims. Justice for crime victims is non-negotiable if we are to ensure quality of life and peace and progress in our communities.

Justice for victims also arrests impunity. We want all criminals brought to justice so that none of us is ever victimized by them again. This is the ideal we pursue even if it is unrealistic to fully obtain.

But we want to make certain in rounding up criminals who are causing harm in our neighborhoods that we do so with appropriate legal safeguards against would-be despots, who would abuse power in their hands by oppressing the weak and vulnerable. We also cannot allow mob rule and street justice as we want to protect the rights of the poor and the powerless. The manner by which we defend the rights of those in the margins of our communities is the standard by which we measure our flourishing as society. The Rule of Law and due process shield against the depredation of the weak by the powerful among us.

While the Rule of Law seeks justice for crime victims, such “justice” would be hollow if we don’t include under such rules the fair treatment of suspects and accused by requiring proof of their guilt beyond reasonable doubt by a corrupt-free justice system. The basic demand of fairness is that not one party should act as the prosecutor, judge and executioner. The convergence of these three different functions into one party embodies what is so detestable about EJKs.

Unless we carefully adhere to the demand of fairness, the law of the jungle would take over where the most powerful rules without restraint and the rest carries the weight of oppression.

“Our justice system is broken,” you might say, “impunity happens, and criminals get away with murder! Why don’t we just employ the law of the jungle and kill all the druggies?”

If the justice system is broken, the solution is to fix it and not to ditch the Rule of Law and due process. If our front door is broken the correct solution is to fix it and not get rid of the door altogether leaving the occupants more vulnerable and exposed.

The same is true if we applaud the killing of suspected criminals without due process of law. The evil that we think we prevent by killing criminals outside of the Rule of Law is merely replaced by the evil we perpetuate in killing them. Such “justice” is a mirage and will not quench our thirst for peace and safety.

The Rule of Law stops the cycle of violence that threatens the existence of our society. And punctiliously adhering to it despite the temptation to short-cut the process assures us of a more secure, just and peaceful future. Without the Rule of Law, predators win hands down all the time! When you’re tempted to ditch the Rule of Law, think again, as you might need its protection someday.

The rights of victims and the rights of suspects and accused from unjust punishment, including those that we consider the scum of society, are like two legs that help us tread the path of a just and progressive society. When anybody foolishly tries to cut-off one leg in favor of the other, it cripples justice and no one can be really safe anymore.