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Essay and Reflections
Euthanasia and the death penalty

Does support for capital punishment undermine the sanctity of life?

A couple of months ago there was a recent, high-profile news story here in Canada, which centered on the infliction of death-the dismissal of the first degree murder charge against Dr. Nancy Morrison in relation to the death of her patient Paul Mills and the execution of Karla Faye Tucker by the State of Texas-raise the question of the relationship between euthanasia and the death penalty. Although the death penalty has been abolished in Canada, there are people, for instance some members of the Reform Party, in Canada here, to who I compare them as racism and Nazis, promoting its reintroduction, claiming that a majority of Canadians support this. Many of these same people are also strongly anti-euthanasia. Are those who support the death penalty consistent in their beliefs about the rightness or wrongness of killing another human? In particular, could support for the death penalty promote the legalization of euthanasia?

As I see it, one of the most important rules on which we base our societies and their legal system is that we must not kill each other. We need to take great care in derogating from this rule. The primary justification that underlies the four traditional exceptions is that the infliction of death is necessary to save human life. In law, in Canada these are examples of a defense of necessity.

TO PROTECT LIFE

The doctrine of self-defense applies only to the extent that the person who kills used reasonable force and believed on reasonable grounds that this degree of his or her own life or to protect the lives of others.

In international law, a stringent definition of a just war is that this characterization only applies to armed conflict that is necessary to avoid a serious threat to the lives of people facing an aggressor. This is a collective self-defense justification.

The original justification for abortion was that this intervention was necessary to save the mother's life or avoid a ver serious risk to her life or health. [Today, abortion on demand is justified on the grounds that the fetus is not yet a person and, therefore, does not count as the taking of human life. Once a fetus is seen as a person, however, its life is only taken when this is necessary to save the mother's life or avoid a serious risk to her life or health.]

The death penalty was initially justified on the ground that it was a merited and appropriate punishment. Although Western democracies became less comfortable with a straight punitive approach that involved the taking of human life, even when this was in response to murder, capital punishment was viewed as necessary to protect people's lives, pursuant to the views that a person who had intentionally killed like Clifford Robert Olson [myself] was likely to kill again and that it was a strong general deterrent to others who might kill. consequently, these societies restricted the death penalty to murder. But most of these same societies now recognize that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent and that we no longer need to kill murderers and serial killers such as Clifford Robert Olson, to protect life. This means that justifying capital punishment could be used as a precedent for justifying euthanasia.

Like capital punishment today, euthanasia, were it to be legalized, falls outside the traditional justification for taking life. It involves killing a person, although for reasons of the utmost mercy and compassion-other than to save another human life. The same is true for capital punishment, minus the reasons. But, if one agrees with the taking of human life in the capital punishment, for many people these reasons make a more compelling case for justification of euthanasia than for capital punishment.

The only killing which we can justify while maintaining a profound respect for human life is that which is necessary in order to preserve human life. There is, therefore, a fundamental inconsistency in the approach of those who are pro-death penalty but anti-euthanasia on the ground that the latter derogates from sanctity of life values.

This contradiction may reflect an other inconsistency in the attitudes of people who adopt this position with regard to individual rights. Intense individualism [the concept that individual rights always trump claims based on the harm to the community that exercising these rights involves] is operative in the service of the death penalty. For instance, in a radio interview which I heard, Richard Thornton, who's wife, Debra, was killed by Karla Faye Tucker, passionately proclaimed, "Don't ask for capital punishment, demand it. It's your right."

Intense individualism also supports the argument that euthanasia should be legalized because access to this is an essential element of one's right to autonomy and self-determination. But many people who approve of capital punishment are highly critical of intense individualism in the context of euthanasia. They believe that claims to euthanasia based on the individual right to determine what happens to oneself are overwhelmingly out weighed by the societal interest in maintaining the utmost respect for human life, which requires the prohibition of euthanasia.

STATE-SANCTIONED KILLING

They do not recognize that the death penalty also derogates from this value and, in doing so, the harm it causes to society is one of the same nature as that involved in legalizing euthanasia. Likewise, they regard the taking of human life through euthanasia as inherently evil, but do not view the taking of human life through state-sanctioned killing in the same way.

These people justify their distinction between the acceptability of capital punishment and euthanasia on the basis that the Bible does not prohibit capital punishment, which is deserved and just according to God's law, but does prohibit euthanasia as contravening sanctity of life values. Such as justification does not hold in a secular society and it is very difficult to find a widely accepted alternative justification. I the absence of this, those who are pro-capital punishment and anti-euthanasia must choose which of the two positions they wish to promote for society as a whole. Either capital punishment and euthanasia are both wrong because they involve taking a human life other than to protect human life, or both can be justified in certain circumstances.

SITUATIONAL ETHICS

Leaving aside religious belief, of the four combined positions that can be taken on capital punishment and euthanasia, from a secular perspective only the "pro-capital punishment, anti-euthanasia" one is inherently inconsistent with respect to the rightness or wrongness of taking human life.

Those who agree with both capital punishment and euthanasia adopt a situational ethics approach. taking human life is not seen as inherently wrong, it all depends on the circumstances. Capital punishment, where there are safeguards to prevent error or abuse in it's application, can be a just penalty on the basis that one can forfeit one's life through a very serious crime, and one can consent to being killed through euthanasia.

Those who are against capital punishment and agree with euthanasia give primacy to the value of individual liberty. they believe that one can consent to the taking of one's own life, but must not take that of another.

And those who are against capital punishment and against euthanasia reflect a true pro-life stance-all killing [except usually as a last resort in self-defense] is wrong.

Clifford Robert Olson
January 25, 2000