Metaphors of Life and Death

Discussions of the death penalty have a lot in common with the traditional, tiresome arguments about race. In both instances there is a facade of rationality—some races are demonstrably inferior to others and executions deter homicidal crime. The available evidence on race and achievement clearly contradicts racist assumptions, but since the question of race and intelligence is recurrently raised by “respectable” sources, the ideology of race takes on a veneer of reason. While there is no proof of the deterrent effect of capital punishment, the evidence lends itself to argument. A recent attempt to apply the sophisticated tools of econometrics to the problem concluded that capital punishment does have a deterrent effect. That conclusion was immediately challenged. The mere existence of such solemn and arcane analyses, where the only passion is in defense of technique, lends an air of reason to the proponents of the death penalty.

It is particularly appropriate that the lastest controversy appears in the scholarly journals of the economists, since the deterrence argument must ultimately rest on a conception of the murderer as a variant of homo economicus. Capital punishment can only deter homicide when a potential murderer has calculated the pains of being caught and convicted against the pleasures of killing. But, as Albert Camus once remarked in a classic essay, the typical murderer rises from his bed in the morning not knowing that by day’s end he will have killed someone. The certainty of punishment is a critical influence only when the behavior is highly “professional”; that is, when it is highly rational. Calculation and foresight, though, are spectacularly absent in almost all cases of homicide. People die as a result of passions aroused by love, fear, and anger; as a result of panic, as in a bungled robbery; from the drunkard’s loss of sense and inhibition; or from the irrational maliciousness of some kinds of muggings.