Content warning: The following opinion contains graphic descriptions of several methods of execution.
“Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”
That famous question was the very first asked of 1988 Democratic presidential nominee and then Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis at a debate with then-Vice President and Republican nominee George H. W. Bush.
Dukakis responded bluntly with “No, I don’t.” He wouldn’t favor giving the death penalty to his wife’s hypothetical rapist and killer. He went on to talk about the lack of evidence supporting capital punishment’s effectiveness as a deterrent and his own record of reducing crime.
But the audience wasn’t having any of it. The conservative electorate of the 1980s wanted a “law and order” president—someone like Bush, who’d follow in Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan’s footsteps.
In the electorate’s eyes, Dukakis was weak and “soft on crime,” just another emotional “bleeding heart liberal.” And they punished him for it, delivering Bush a landslide victory that November.
The primary problem with Bush’s “tough on crime” approach was its failure to address the underlying socioeconomic conditions that produce crime. Rather than treat criminals as complex human beings molded by their circumstances, the GOP framed criminals as morally misshapen monsters. They were solely to blame for where their lives had gone. They bore full responsibility for whatever they’d done.
Under this limited worldview, it makes sense that the death penalty could be applied to criminals. They did the crime, so killing them is seen as fixing the problem.
Now, over 35 years after Dukakis was humiliated for speaking the truth, there are ostensibly left-leaning people adopting the same support for retribution that once characterized Reagan-era conservatism.
What happened to systemic and structural change? To curing the disease, not treating the symptoms?
The expert consensus has long been that the death penalty doesn’t deter criminal activity, according to Amnesty International. In fact, states and countries with the death penalty tend to have higher murder rates.
“So what?” you might ask. If the death penalty doesn’t eliminate the root causes, couldn’t it still provide something to a survivor or the family of a victim?
Well, is that brief moment of happiness worth strapping a prisoner to a table as an inexperienced lacky jabs them over and over in the arm in a desperate attempt to find a vein?
Is that brief moment of happiness worth tearing off the head of a prisoner because the rope was too long or subjecting them to a seeming eternity of suffocation because it was too short?
Is that brief moment of happiness worth jolting a prisoner with 2000 volts of electricity for 30 seconds—to the extent the state’s death squad has to wait a few seconds for the body to cool down before it can check to see if another dosage of death is necessary?
Is it worth prisoners’ bones breaking and shins cracking? Is it worth their eyes popping out of their sockets and their head catching fire? Is it worth forcing an already humiliated person to go out with one last uncontrollable death defecation? Does the smell of burning flesh or the popping sounds or a cooked brain make you second guess the pleasure of your revenge?
What about the simple end of their consciousness? They’re utterly destroyed—for your sake.
Who are you to put your happiness above that of the perpetrator? Who are your loved ones to put their satisfaction above another human’s dignity?
Are you worth more than prisoners simply because circumstances have led them down a violent path? Are you implying they’re somehow less than you? That you rank above them in some sort of social hierarchy? That they possess personal responsibility for their actions? That they’re some kind of vermin that needs to be exterminated for the good of the “right” kind of people?
If so, you certainly aren’t a leftist.
Matthew Pellittieri is a 19-year-old history and political science sophomore from Ponchatoula.
