1-25-89 Wednesday. Theodore (“Ted”) Bundy was executed by the state of Florida yesterday morning. Bundy was convicted over a decade ago of stalking and killing a Florida girl. He was suspected of killing dozens of other women in Utah, Washington, Florida, and other states, but consistently denied doing so. Until recently, that is. Bundy’s last-minute appeal of his death sentence was denied by the Florida and United States Supreme Courts, so Florida’s governor, Bob Martinez, signed a death warrant. Knowing that it was all over, Bundy began confessing to other murders, perhaps in an effort to buy time. After all, once he’s dead, the cases will remain unsolved and families will never know what happened to their daughters. But it didn’t work. It now transpires that Bundy killed over thirty women, most of them brutally. The surprising thing is that Bundy is a former law student and political aide. Brash and confident, he fired his court-appointed attorneys and represented himself in his widely publicized trial. Everyone who knew Bundy said that he was smart, witty, and engaging. Nobody knows how he could have murdered so many women, though, given his intelligence, it’s easy to understand how he got away with it for so long.
Naturally, Bundy’s execution has reopened the debate about the morality and legality (that is, constitutionality) of the death penalty. Those opposed to capital punishment say that Bundy deserves the worst punishment a civilized society has to offer, but that a civilized society (such as ours, presumably) does not offer capital punishment. Those in favor of capital punishment claim that the Bundy case supports them; it shows the need for a penalty of death in certain cases. As Bundy was being electrocuted this morning, dozens of people waited outside the prison, cheering his demise and insisting that justice was finally being done. Those opposed to capital punishment cite this as evidence that capital punishment is uncivilized. “Look at the vengeful, hateful behavior it brings out in otherwise reasonable, law-abiding people”, they say. Missing in the debate is the idea of retribution, of getting what you deserve. Both proponents and opponents of capital punishment think that its morality hinges on its deterrent effect. To me, the strongest argument in favor of capital punishment is that it pays people back for what they have done. It symbolizes our commitment to nonviolence, liberty, and justice. I think that society has a right to execute people for certain misdeeds, but that it’s not always right (that is, justified, all things considered) to do so. Most people fail to see the difference between these statements. The logical gap that they open up is the “mercy gap”, for that is where mercy exists.
Note from KBJ: Already, by 20 years ago, I was a minimal and a permissive retributivist, but not a maximal retributivist. Please note that in other respects I was a progressive (a radical feminist, for example).
