On 2012-10-05, at 11:31 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> …executing a criminal or two is something of a
> relatively low significance.
Unfortunately true, because the issue only touches a very tiny handful of victims and their families (on both sides, as Dennis C. noted), and people are typically unmoved unless their own interests are directed affected. Where the suffering of others is concerned, indifference and schadenfreude rather than empathy and solidarity seems to be the norm. I'm tempted to attribute this to capitalist alienation, but the death penalty originated and retains deep roots in cultures which predate capitalism, when public executions doubled as a form of social control and popular entertainment.
I know through a very close friend of ours how devastating the consequences can be for the families of those put to death by the state, because they not only share the grief of the murder victim's family, but have to cope with the additional burden of guilt, shame, and often ostracism. Her uncle, only in his early twenties, was hung many years ago in Toronto's Don Jail when she was a little girl, shortly before the abolition of capital punishment in Canada. He was a member of a swashbuckling band of bank robbers known as the Boyd Gang which attracted wide public attention and even a certain admiration until a shootout with the police claimed the life of a constable. Though our friend's uncle didn't fire the fatal shot, he was executed as an accomplice. She remembers him fondly as a young man with a rebellious streak, which, together with economic deprivation and a greater opportunity for criminal than political activity, determined his life's course. The family never recovered from the tragedy, and it was many years later before our friend could talk openly about it. Today, of course, her uncle would have been incarcerated, with at least the chance for rehabilitation and parole. What social benefit accrued and continues to accrues from the barbaric "retributive justice" which was administered to him and others like him is beyond me.