2003-03-14 Capital Punishment
Opinion	Considering Haman and rethinking the death penalty San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage, March. 14, 2003

By Donald H. Harrison The Purim story invites us to face an issue that I have gone back and forth about my entire life : capital punishment. Haman tried to kill all the Jews. As punishment, he was sent to the gallows. I remember when I was in public school that California death row inmate Caryl Chessman, the so-called Red Light Bandit, became an author and an eloquent spokesman for the idea that even people who have murdered can be rehabilitated into useful members of society. Chessman convinced me that the death penalty was a bad idea, and, when he was executed, I grieved that society had been deprived of such a mind. My anti-death penalty feelings solidified during my college years, when I realized to what extent the judicial system seemed to favor the rich defendant over the poor defendant.  When statistics were shown to me that most people on Death Row were poor and members of minority groups, I was certain that the system had to be changed.The idea that some innocent people on Death Row could be sent to their fates, even if DNA tests not available during the time of their trial might subsequently exonerate them, further validated my opposition to the death penalty. Consequently, I certainly understood the sentiment that led the outgoing governor of Illinois recently to commute all the death penalty sentences meted out by his state, thereby converting the Death Row prisoners therein to prisoners-for-life. Philosophically, I was opposed to the death penalty because once applied it was irrevocable. Had we not been taught in our civics classes that it is better that a guilty person goes free rather than an innocent person be falsely imprisoned? Wasn't such an argument even more pressing in capital punishment cases? However, my ideas failed to take into account the fact that there were and are people in this world who use mass murder as an instrument of political policy. If they are successful, they will eradicate this country and, with it, the very system of justice and fairness which we so treasure. Haman, the ambitious villain in Megillat Esther, was an early example of such an evil. Hitler, of course, was another example. So was his nazi henchman Adolph Eichmann, whom the State of Israel captured, put on trial and— in a departure from its usual policy — executed. Today, we face other mass murderers: the terrorists who are willing to sacrifice their own lives as well as those of innocent men, women and children for their "cause." The same thinking that enabled terrorists to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma and to pilot planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon also propelled attacks on civilians in Israeli discos, hotels, shopping malls and university cafeterias. When governments such as those of Iraq, Syria and Iran— not to mention the Palestinian Authority — praise and financially support such suicide bombers, they abdicate their responsibility to a world governed by laws, and instead promote the rule of violence. To my mind, there is a qualitative difference between a citizen who murders another citizen, for whatever reason, and a political organization or country that wants to eradicate another country or people. It is legitimate to debate how the United States should treat individual murderers in its midst. Once in prison, they are under control and no longer pose a threat, so the only question is whether their executions might serve as a deterrent to other murders. I have my doubts that they would. But this debate should not be confused with the necessity for the United States, Israel and other countries to defend themselves against threats to their very existence. I believe people and nations must defend themselves against nations and political organizations that laugh at conventional law and seek weapons of mass destruction to commit mass murder. I have concluded that Israel is correct in its policy to assassinate the terrorists who seek another genocide for the Jews. Similarly, I have come to believe that the United States should remove Saddam Hussein from power, and let all malevolent dictators know thereby that the United States is not afraid to use its might to protect itself, its people and its allies. And I have decided that liberals like me must rethink our absolute opposition to the death penalty in light of the overwhelming evidence that the modern Hamans of the world cannot otherwise be stopped.