Ashcroft Plays Dracula

The site of America's chief law enforcement official, blood-lust fairly dripping from his teeth, was one of those razor moments that cuts away the lies we tell ourselves about what we are doing. And I think it's important that we see clearly.

We tell ourselves a lie about the death penalty: that it's a deterrent.

What person in their right mind will argue that the death penalty served as a deterrent to John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo as they hid in a Chevy Caprice and took aim at people pumping gas? You, there, in the third row: stand and make the case that Muhammad and Malvo weighed the penalties and opted to kill more people in Maryland than in Virginia because they were less likely to get the death penalty in Maryland.

It seems pretty clear from what we know of criminal psychology that serial killers act out dark obsessions caused by embittering life experiences, or mental illness, or both. And I think it's fair to say that most killers believe they won't get caught at all. Seems to me we've even heard about some serial killers who believed they were justified in doing what they did, that society would validate their reasons and call them heroes.

Let's tell the truth about the death penalty: that its real purpose is revenge. This gets most obvious when victims' families come together to argue for the death penalty. I thought our national motto was "In God we trust," but when a family works together to get somebody executed, it seems more like, "In killing we trust."

How do we justify the legalized lust for revenge? Some use a Biblical passage: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Makes sense, considering much of American law is based on Judeo-Christian ethics.

Let's look for an example of eye-for-an-eye-thinking, and see how effective it is. How about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians — wow, it's sure worked over there, hasn't it? The Middle East, global headquarters of tit-for-tat, where peace and prosperity reign supreme!

Tit-for-tat: You hit me, I hit you back. I would think that if the lives of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., demonstrated anything at all, it is that not hitting back is not only more effective but is morally defensible in ways that hitting back can simply never be.

There is no real logic to the death penalty. Those of us who are parents are sometimes embarrassed to find ourselves saying to our kids, "Do as I say, not as I do." Think of the death penalty as simply an example on a national scale. Put a law on the books that says, "Don't kill anybody," and then kill anybody who breaks it. A five-year-old can see through that. Imagine telling your kids, "Don't steal any money from our cookie jar, or we'll take all your money in reprisal." Reprisal teaches that what matters is who wins the game by perpetrating last. What we want to teach is that there's something not right about stealing.

I wonder if serial killers harbor an unconscious death wish and "act out" in increasingly violent ways until the wish is fulfilled. If so, having a death penalty on the books makes as much sense as it would to recruit airline pilots from among people who have attempted suicide. If there are people out there with a death wish, willing to kill in order to get it fulfilled, let's stop offering them a prescription.

If victims' families believe that getting revenge is going to heal their loss, I think they're sadly mistaken. The death penalty doesn't bring the dead back to life. Yes, it's a tragedy when someone dies a violent death. Life is part tragedy, and we rightly grieve that it is so. Our religious leaders and philosophers spend their lives questioning why it should be so, and most conclude that we cannot understand God's ways or see all that God intends.

But this much is certain: revenge merely multiplies the tragedy by causing further suffering. The death penalty is state-sanctioned murder, and we are all guilty of malice aforethought. We injure ourselves by allowing it to continue. Anything that increases suffering in any way harms us all, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.

Let it end here. Let us renounce revenge as the basis of public policy.