Retribution. Most people whose opinions I respect say it should not be a factor in sentencing. But gee that’s a tall order in worst-case scenarios, or in cases where a loved one was a victim.

I have my own particular concept of responsibility which helps to inform my decision for life in prison over the death penalty. That, along with the need to protect the innocent from wrongful execution, works for me. Here it is:

I don’t give individuals a lot of credit for their goodness, nor do I give bad people a lot of “credit” for their badness—at least not in an ultimate god-point-of-view sort of way. In other words, in an ultimate sense, I neither blame nor credit people much, because I find it difficult to hold people ultimately accountable for their actions. We are what was given to us. Even our ability and willingness to behave was given us. We have the freedom to choose, but we were not able to choose the tools by which we spend our lives choosing.

On this earth, in a practical every-day sort of way, we do have to require people to be responsible for their behaviors. Can’t have people running red lights and cheating on their taxes. Or killing others.

But in an ultimate sense, I simply cannot hold people very respon-sible for their behaviors (including not praising people much for their goodness), because I believe we’re all ultimately the products of the personal computers we were given at birth. How our brains process things, including our environments as we grow up, determine who we are.

So even in cases of our “deliberate” evil (or our deliberate goodness), the decisions we make are still based on who we are—everything that is us, based on our brains and our chemical balance and our environment.

Here’s how that relates to the death penalty: Capital punishment isn’t about running a red light or cheating on taxes. In almost all cases, it is about ultimate retribution—an ultimate, god-like judgment. So on a certain level, I have to say, What arrogance that we should snuff the life out of a person who was, in the end, carrying out the actions predisposed by the software pre-installed in him or her. (Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t remove them from access to the public, if they are dangerous.)

Again, the main reason to forego capital punishment is to protect the innocent, but the above is reason too, in my own mind. I don’t see it as a religious concept, nor do I see it as “predestination” exactly. I just think people do whatever is in their nature, be it good or ill, and it seems to me that even our “deliberate choices” are subject to the “who we are” that was essentially determined by nature’s throw of the dice in the first place.

Although this is not a religious concept to me, if I were still a Christian, I’d have to be a “universalist”—meaning God would save everyone in the end. But I’m not, so I’m not.

I’m still thinking about this, leaving a little wiggle room for it in my own mind.  

                                                                             -LH