More on John Muhammad's Execution

Michael Perry beat me to it, but . . . a few thoughts on the Muhammad execution, and it's connection to the larger debate about the content and implications of our -- that is, of Catholics' -- pro-life commitment:

First, it seems to me that the execution of Muhammad (like the execution of, say, Tim McVeigh) is a challenge to abolitionists (like me) to reflect carefully on the reasons why we oppose capital punishment.  After all, Muhammad committed horrible crimes (there is no danger, in this particular case, so far as I know, that the wrong person was executed) and I am not aware of any troubling deficiencies in his representation or in the review of his case.  Why, exactly, should he not be executed? 

The answer is probably not, I think, "because it is never justifiable, given the dignity of the human person, for the public authority to kill a human being."  Punishment can be morally justified and the Church has always taught (and still, so far as I understand it, still teaches) that capital punishment can also, in some (exceedingly rare) circumstances, be justified.  So, why shouldn't we impose this punishment?  It is simple to say "because this is not one of those exceedingly rare circumstances."  Why not? 

Now, what happened to John Muhammad is not, I think, the same thing, morally speaking, as what happens when a doctor causes the death, by abortion, of an unborn child; what happened when Virginia's lawmakers authorized capital punishment for aggravated murders, or when it was decided that Muhammad's was such a murder, was not the same thing, morally speaking, as what happens when legislatures decide to exclude unborn children from the law's protections against lethal private violence.  Still, I think our laws should not authorize, and we should not impose, capital punishment.  Why?

Some reasons are easy:  Capital punishment is very expensive (and its "benefits" do not seem to outweigh its "costs"); it seems (even more so than punishment generally) difficult to distribute in a way that maps with the exactness we should want onto culpability; it is final (and so mistakes cannot be corrected); etc.  What else? 

For me, two lines of thought do most of the work.  (I think I owe both of them to Cardinal Dulles, but I might have him wrong):  First, opposition to capital punishment expresses my commitment to the idea that the modern state is not absolute, though it has troubling pretensions to absolute-ness; second, a society that manages to restrain itself from imposing capital punishment might turn out to be (though, it is far from clear that it will in fact turn out to be) more pro-life generally; a society that is able to say "we will not execute, though we could, and though we would gain some benefits from doing so, even a duly convicted murderer" might also manage to say "we will not indulge the pernicious idea that some people have a fundamental moral right to cause the deaths of other vulnerable people who depend on them, just because it seems beneficial to do so."

UPDATE:  Over at National Review Online, Kathryn Lopez has these thoughts about her opposition to capital punishment.  Bottom line:  "We can do better."