In 2007, 88% of the executions worldwide occurred in China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. This is the company that we keep…
The most powerful psychological tool of tyrannical or totalitarian governments is the use of the death penalty. This does not even have to be pervasive to be persuasive as a threat. In 2007, 88% of the executions worldwide occurred in China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. This is the company that we keep, and they are quick to point to the United States to justify their use of coercive power and the death penalty.
Sixteen states and Washington D.C. have now abolished the death penalty. Internationally 136 out of 195 countries have abolished the death penalty. A country cannot belong to the European Union if it allows the death penalty. New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007. Illinois has just abolished the death penalty in 2011 primarily as a result of a series of revelations that 20 people since 1977 in their state had been sent to Death Row who were later exonerated. In the period from 1973 to 2007 there was one Death Row prisoner in the United States who was exonerated for every nine Death Row prisoners who were executed.
There are many reasons to consider abolishing the death penalty in Ohio, but one should keep in mind a global perspective and the importance of ideas and the values behind those ideas. We now live in a pluralistic global community with relatively easy access to weapons of mass destruction. Eliminating the death penalty in Ohio and then eventually in the nation would be a good place to start in addressing the issues related to violence and terrorism in our time.
A major unacknowledged but obvious important conflict in international affairs, for example, is between moderate and radical Muslims, with the radical Muslims being defined as those who are willing to use lethal force based on religion as a means to their ends. This has included stoning women to death for infidelity, honor killings, assassinations for “blasphemy”, executions by the Taliban and al-Qaeda of farmers and journalists for political control, suicide bombings and terrorist attacks. As usual, the ends are used to justify the means. The means, however, define any group as much as the ends, and the means often come to distort the ends. We should do everything we can to focus world opinion on such issues. Abolishing the death penalty in Ohio and then our nation would help to do so. It would also help us understand and convey that the primary moral values in our constitutional democracy include equality understood as a respect for human dignity and our common humanity in addition to freedom.
