That’s what moral injury is all about. …Killing hurts the killer, too, even in self-defense or in the line of duty and … no justification, legal, political, religious, or otherwise, can heal those wounds.
The death penalty must end. It’s been facing technical difficulties for decades, and drug manufacturers resist their drugs being used. It also has little, if any, deterrent value. And its existence has put the U.S. outside the civilized world. In addition, Arkansas, which announced it will start executing 8 people in 11 days beginning the day after Easter, has had trouble finding civilians to be the six legally-required witnesses at the executions.
Now, moral injury in corrections officials has emerged as another problem with the death penalty. Former corrections officers in Arkansas sent a letter to Governor Hutchinson because of the impact of executions on those who must do the killing. As the letter states,
The paradoxical nature of corrections officers’ roles in an execution often goes unnoticed: the officers who have dedicated their professional life to protecting the safety and wellbeing of prisoners are asked to participate in the execution of a person under their care.
The corrections officers note that errors, which can lead to cruel outcomes, increase with the stresses of closely scheduled executions because officers have no time to process the magnitude of what they have had to do. After the 2014 bungled execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma, conducted with another scheduled the same night, the state’s Department of Public Safety recommended executions be conducted no more than one per week.
The timing of the Arkansas executions, just days after Easter Sunday in the West, is an irony not lost on progressive Christians. The execution of Jesus of Nazareth is customarily remembered with mourning on the Friday before Easter. The “good” in Good Friday is an archaic translation and means pious or holy (OED good: adj. 8c). It is always a day of mourning. As a review of Mark Osler’s 2009 book, Jesus on Death Row, notes, the parallels between the Gospels and today are stunning:
Prosecutors still rely on paid informants to bolster their case as the Pharisees famously paid 30 silver coins to Judas Iscariot; the appeal process of today, although slower, is not unlike the process that Jesus went through as he was brought before the Jewish Elders, Pontius Pilate, and Herod. Arrests today are often made when a suspect is vulnerable and unprotected, which is how Jesus was arrested at night in the garden…Osler discusses the last meal of prisoners, which is probably the death row event with which average people can most easily identify. He notes that Jesus's last supper the night before his execution was well documented in the gospels and is a key event in Christian history.
Crucifixion was one especially cruel and torturous version of the death penalty that the Romans used as a display of power to terrorize those regarded as opponents of the empire. For example, six thousand crucifixions lined the Appian Way from Capua to Rome at the end Spartacus’ slave rebellion to warn others thinking of an uprising.
This Good Friday, April 14th, folks in Little Rock are planning a vigil against the executions planned after Easter, and they invite people of faith, as well as our secular allies, to organize vigils at courthouses across the country. This is an opportunity for us all to stand up for rehabilitation instead of death and restorative justice instead of retribution.
When an execution is conducted, the cause of death is always “homicide.” That word on the death certificate makes clear what society mandates: we ask executioners to override their basic humanity and deliberately, with planning and forethought, to kill another human being. But legally sanctioned killing is difficult for moral human beings because we can’t turn empathy on and off at will. We can repress or deny it, but it does its work anyway at levels most of us don’t realize.
David Grossman in his book, On Killing, discusses how difficult even authorized killing can be. War combatants, even after months of careful training, often cannot bring themselves to shoot at people, even if they are enemies who are trying to destroy them. Many who fight would rather die to save another than take a life, but when they do kill, they can be devastated and never recover. U.S. veterans commit suicide at about triple the rates of civilians, but veterans who have killed in war do so twice as often as other veterans.
In the U.S. 86% of executions happen in the “Bible Belt,” where conversion, biblical certainty, and dogmatic certainty are essential elements of faith. The fallacy is to think that such certainty is possible in a highly flawed, obviously racist criminal justice system. “Beyond reasonable doubt,” the standard for convictions in capital crimes, is all the law needs, but law enforcement officers sometimes draw confessions from innocent people. Even forensic evidence does not offer 100% proof. I had a DNA test done a couple of years ago with a brother with whom I share a father but not a mother. We were deemed 98.5% to share one parent, not 100%. For the purposes of legal proof, it is good enough. But 1.5% should not be acceptable doubt for a society to authorize taking a life. As Baptist theologian Roger Olson notes,
Christians believe that every individual human being might be someone chosen by God for his salvation and for his service. Only God knows with certainty whom he can use for his service, by whatever means (including intercessory prayer), and who still has a chance to repent, believe (trust in Christ) and be saved. When we take another human life unnecessarily, we usurp God’s prerogative for that person’s eventual salvation or, if they are already saved, for that person’s future service for the Kingdom of God.
I want to suggest another reason that our society should end the death penalty: it is better for all concerned. It is better for the criminal justice officers to see their work as a way to rehabilitate prisoners or as a way to protect society from them with humane care. We risk losing good officers because of the wearing down of their moral foundations through moral injury and the impact of losing their sense of being a good person because they deliberately killed a human being. And citizens who witness such killings may also find themselves traumatized.
The death penalty inflicted on a murderer is not justice but part of the problem itself. Fear, outrage, aggression, and desires for retribution or revenge are responses to violence that are normal responses to trauma. Violent crimes are deeply traumatizing to all affected by them, and it is not possible to return to who we were before. The only choice is to move forward and try to recover, but recovery is not possible without relationships of support that help us get through the nightmares, anger, and grief.
For those without that support, the trauma can become what defines life. If emotional responses to trauma cannot be calmed and inner peace restored to the survivors of violence, their lives and futures will continue to be driven by the aftereffects of the trauma itself. It can seem as if the death of the perpetrator will bring release, but that narrowed vision makes violence the only solution to violence. Then, the worst moment of a victim’s life remains the most important focus of it.
Releasing fury or exacting revenge can bring catharsis, but catharsis itself is part of trauma. It can become addicting and trap people in wanting to relive it.
Our criminal justice system must not be an instrument of catharsis. It must, instead, uphold what lies beyond violence and trauma. It must focus on the whole of life, not just on its worst moments. That means it must honor the victims and those who loved them with an affirmation of life and hope for the future. It must also attend to the whole life of those who inflict violence, to the possibilities for their coming to regret and grieve their offenses. In the transformation that time can offer, an open future makes possible reconciliation or right relationships between perpetrators and survivors, a future made utterly impossible by homicide. It is always better for survivors of violence to process and integrate feelings from trauma and live with renewed hope for the future. The death penalty does not bring true closure. It just ends another life.