By Eric Roux
Eric Roux is the Chair of the Global Council of the United Religions Initiative (URI), the world’s largest grassroots interfaith network, active in over 110 countries, and the Chair of the European Interreligious Forum for Religious Freedom. A longtime advocate for human rights, interreligious dialogue, and freedom of belief, he works to foster cooperation across cultural and spiritual traditions to address global challenges. In his leadership role, Roux champions initiatives that promote peace, dignity, and justice, with a particular commitment to defending fundamental rights where they are most at risk. What follows is his own considered view.
There is nothing in this world, beyond a few appearances, that can ever justify the death penalty. Almost three centuries ago, the French jurist and philosopher of the Enlightenment Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794), in his work “On Crimes and Punishments”, denounced the death penalty, which he called “legal murder.” Far from being an effective deterrent, he argued, it makes society cruel. Murder, and worse than the other kind, because it is dressed in robes, sentences, formulas, and, to strike more effectively, cloaked in the icy trappings of legality. Far from correcting man, it hardens society; it does not elevate it, it debases it; it does not enlighten it, it bloodies it.
Poets and the death penalty
Shortly afterwards, Victor Hugo, seeing the scaffold, hearing it creak, contemplating this shadow-machine that crushes lives, published “The Last Day of a Condemned Man”. And this book was not, like so many others, the defense of one man, the fragile plea of a singular case, but the universal cry, the endless and unending plea for all the accused, present and future — the protest of humanity itself before society. In his own words: “a plea, direct or indirect, as one wills, for the abolition of the death penalty. What he intended to do, what he would like posterity to see in his work, if it ever concerns itself with such trifles, is not the special, always easy, and always transitory defense of this or that chosen criminal, this or that accused of choice; it is the general and permanent plea for all accused, present and future; it is the great point of law of humanity alleged and pleaded with one voice before society, it is the dark and fatal question that throbs obscurely at the heart of all capital cases under the triple layers of pathos with which the bloody rhetoric of the king’s men envelops it; it is the question of life and death, I say, stripped bare, stripped naked, stripped of the sonorous convolutions of the courtroom, brutally brought to light, and placed where it must be seen, where it must be, where it really is, in its true environment, in its horrible environment, not in court, but on the scaffold, not with the judge, but with the executioner.”
Hugo’s work has not aged. Because it confronts an eternal question, as old as Cain, spanning all ages, all societies, all cultures, all continents of the Earth: the right to kill. At least 93 countries have now abolished the death penalty; de facto, more than 130 no longer carry out executions. More than 80 still officially retain it, even though some of them have not executed anyone for half a century. Yet among those that have abolished it, there is never a guarantee it will not return.
Oscar Wilde, after witnessing an execution while serving a sentence for homosexuality at Reading Prison, wrote his poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.” Just an observation, no need to argue:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.
He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty space.
(…)
He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one’s throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.
Voices calling for vengeance
I hear the voices that, from the depths of anger, argue for its retention or revival. Their arguments are familiar: when a man kills his fellow men, taking his life would be tantamount to saving others. One life for many — the calculation seems reasonable. In the face of crimes of abominable gravity, such as the rape of children, who would mourn the existence of a punishment that is harsh, certainly, but ultimately more lenient than the crime itself? And the ultimate argument is deterrence: if criminals know they will end up on the scaffold, the gallows, or in the electric chair, they will think twice before committing the irreparable.
These arguments are fueled by news stories. And by a very human feeling of revolt in the face of the barbarity of certain criminals and their vile crimes. What parent has never thought, “If someone raped my child, I would wipe them from the face of the earth”? What widow, losing her loved one to a knife, has not cried to the heavens that it was an unbearable injustice to see the murderer alive while her husband lay cold? And yet.
And yet, none of these arguments can ever justify a death penalty institutionalized by the state. While the vengeance of a father wounded by a crime against his child can be understood, even excused by the supreme empathy of his fellow human beings, the same can never be said of the vengeance of the state, or the vengeance “of society.”
Virtues that should be ours
For the state should be made of the best of what we are. We should build it on our highest values; it should be woven from reason, kindness, justice and fairness, equity, honesty, benevolence, respect, and high-mindedness, and use its power in accordance with and measured by these virtues. But if the state stoops to murder — even when legal, even when justified — then that is what we, the citizens, declare our values to be. If the state assumes the right to take human life, then society assumes that right, and every man and woman within it will share it, even if it is delegated to an executioner.
Murder is premeditated killing. With the death penalty, society coldly premeditates the killing, deliberately without any doubt, of a human being. It murders. Where the death penalty is legal, it murders legally, it murders with the seal of the legislator, but it murders nonetheless. And by this act, it tells everyone: “You have the right to murder; through me, I will do your dirty work, so you may sleep peacefully.”
Judicial and ontological errors
By murdering with a gun, a rope, poison, or electricity, society sometimes errs about the guilt of the murdered person. For no human justice is infallible. And of all miscarriages of justice, only those carried out under the death penalty are wholly irreparable. Forever.
Even when it does not mistake the guilt of the condemned, it may err about the proportionality of the punishment, about mitigating circumstances, and also about the criminal’s capacity to reform. And forever — because once someone is killed, who can tell us if they could have changed? In this, the justice system denies one of life’s most beautiful abilities: improvement. By cutting off the head, it cuts off hope.
Even if it does not err, it errs still: by becoming what it condemns. Society becomes a murderer, and a cold one at that, without mitigating circumstances, without the excuse of suffering. And those who live within it, men and women of murderous society, become not accomplices of the state but instigators of murder.
Why does a society stoop so low as to believe it has the right to kill its fellow man? Out of weakness. It imagines itself tough, strong, capable of killing the abominable criminal without flinching, but in truth it is only weakness — the inability to face crime and the criminal. It wishes this criminal had never existed; it cannot bear to look him in the face; it cannot talk to him or listen to him, still less understand him (understanding is not excusing). It prefers to deny his humanity, to erase him, and in so doing — fleeing from adversity — it becomes what it cannot face: a criminal. It kills, it eradicates, it annihilates a human being. It destroys him so as not to confront its own powerlessness.
A collective assassination
Oh, this human being may have been the dregs of humanity! Perhaps his worth to others was very limited, even negative. Perhaps he was a complete bastard, a vile rapist, despicable to the core. But he was human — alive before being executed. And we know deep down, whether religious, atheist, or agnostic, that human life lies beyond our rightful power to end. We know this so well that we consider it one of the worst crimes for one human to kill another. When society ends a man’s life, it is collective murder, nothing more, nothing less.
But let us put aside these angelic considerations and, what the hell, look only at the supposed effectiveness of the process in reducing crime, for the best of people. What about the countries most severe in applying the death penalty? Has crime disappeared? No. If the death penalty were a deterrent, it would never be used. But it is not a deterrent (the only “deterrent” more absurd is nuclear deterrence — but that is another story). Do you think the United States has less crime than France? Do you think China has less crime than Spain? No.
There may be various reasons for this, but one thing is certain: criminals who have no regard for the lives of others have no regard for their own. They have lost their self-respect as they have lost respect for others. They can no longer face their fellow men, so they can no longer face themselves. Their own death does not deter them. To their eyes, they are what others are to them: meat, nothing more. And so it is with society, which grants itself the right to kill legally. It no longer considers the right to life inviolable; it imposes conditions on it, it grants itself the power to decide who may live and who must die. It dehumanizes certain humans. The criteria are, of course, fluctuating: sometimes the bar is high, sometimes it is very low. And since it is the state, it tells its citizens: “The right to kill exists, it belongs to man, it belongs to you, it is justified.” Thus it becomes criminal, an apologist for murder, stripped of virtue. It sets the example.
Let us be honest: I do not have much regard for criminals. And the more despicable their crimes, the less regard I have for them (until it disappears). But what differentiates us — we who claim to be honest, who stand on the right side of the shifting barrier of crime (one day selling drugs is a crime, the next day it is legal and brings revenue to the state) — from criminals? It is not the law. It is humanity. And when I say humanity, I do not mean the fallible nature of human beings, but rather that sense of kindness which is our greatest virtue, our refusal to act upon our death-instincts toward anyone. It is our capacity to look upon our fellow human beings and see in them the sanctity of life, even when they seem unworthy of it. It is our willingness to create hope and to improve the world, to give more life to life.
Eradicate crime, not people
I agree without hesitation that force is necessary to prevent criminals from doing harm, and I also agree that the law is necessary to allow us to do so in the most orderly manner possible. But while the law must allow us to be effective, it must also reflect the best in us, it must reflect our humanity and our reason, not amplify the hatred that sometimes overtakes us in response to crime. Above all, it must not degrade us to the point of turning us into murderers. What it must exalt is our honesty and our goodness, which will ultimately ensure our effectiveness. Only honest and good people, with all the nuances of our imperfection, can claim any effectiveness over crime and its eradication. We seek to eradicate crime, not people.
Ultimately, our self-respect demands that we maintain order and prevent crime without allowing hatred to replace our capacity for love — without extinguishing our ability to see the spark of life, the final hope, in every man and woman who inhabits this earth, even the most degraded among us. Our very survival, our very humanity, and our hope for a better world depend on it.
And in this equation, the death penalty has no place, nor will it ever have one. For it degrades not only those it strikes but also those who consent to it or deliver it.
