Two dimensions: the moral and the logical

This degree of moral horror (or lack thereof), I will argue here, determines the boundaries for logical arguments. For the individual therefore, he will only admit logical arguments within a certain span consistent with the moral horror "setting". It's like gross tuning and fine tuning.

For those who see the taking of life as fulminant moral horror, they may admit no logical argument at all. It is just out of the question. Others may admit some logical argument but perhaps confined to how heinous the crime must be to justify the death penalty. They may also demand a very high standard of proof as to the culpability of the accused. To this group, arguments as to whether there is a deterrent effect, or the cost of incarceration, cut no ice. These considerations do not even approach the huge moral question of whether to take a life.

At the other end of the scale, there are individuals who do not see anything morally troubling about judicial executions. They may believe that the moral question was taken out when the accused committed the crime. If you've taken one eye, it's not a moral problem for me or anyone else to take out one of your eyes, so to speak. Within this "gross tuning", the arguments admitted would be utilitarian concerning the relative effectiveness or cost of the death penalty vis-à-vis other judicial punishments. Questions such as deterrent value, retributive value, rehabilitative prospects, cost of incarceration, popular demand, come into play.

Given such compartmentalisation of opinion depending on individuals' appraisal of moral horror and the consequent limitations to logical argument each group admits, debate between persons at vastly different points on the moral scale is mutually incomprehensible. It's as if they are speaking different languages.

The reason this needs to be pointed out is for us to understand that the capital punishment question may not ultimately be resolved by rational arguments. What may be more powerful is a shift in perspective of enough people from one point of the moral scale to another. Then it becomes simply accepted that the use of such punishment is governed by such and such boundaries.

Some people may criticise this analysis as a guillotine on debate, as if I'm saying, there's no point debating, for people will believe what they want to believe. This is not so, for even within a certain band, people can be swung from a more ready to a more circumspect use of the death penalty. But it does suggest that abolitionists must look at how a perspectival shift can be obtained, otherwise, people can only be persuaded so far.

 
Parallels from the gay experience

This is where the gay experience comes in. Both abolition and gay equality being social movements, it shouldn't be surprising to see parallels. The "gay issue" -- more accurately, the problem of homophobia -- is similarly reducible to 2 dimensions: the moral/irrational and the rational.

At the other end of the scale, there are those who do not see anything of a moral question when it comes to people being gay. Within this framework, the logical arguments are mostly about how much leeway should be given to those who are still uncomfortable with the idea; in other words, how much exemption to give the ("unreasonable", "blinkered") homophobes. And even then, such exceptions have to be balanced against what to them is the real moral imperative: that of stamping out and outlawing discrimination. See for example, the issue of Catholic adoption agencies in the UK and the Equality Act, as discussed in the article Catholic adoption agencies demand exemption from serving gay couples.

Gay people and their sympathisers engage in rational arguments all the time, in an attempt to shift public opinion and rebut fallacies, but as discussed in the essay Half of young Singaporeans consider homosexuality acceptable, there has also been running in parallel a sustained campaign to nudge the irrational perception by the simple act of coming out. And it is bearing fruit, as the Singapore Polytechnic's recent survey found.

 
Does public opinion count?

Having said that, and coming back to the question of the death penalty, public opinion may not even count that much. As seen in many countries, it is not an independent variable that determines, or heavily affects, state policy. On the contrary, public opinion to some extent may be a dependant variable, shaped by prevailing government policy. And government policy may hinge on a much narrower slice of opinion -- that of the ruling elite.

As reported in a Columbia University paper, The New Abolitionism: Why does the U.S. practice the death penalty while Europe does not? by Andrew Moravcsik, 
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ces/pub/Moravcsik_sep01.html

... the public opinion explanation does not appear to explain the basic transatlantic divergence we observe. European public opinion, and that of other advanced industrial abolitionist nations, views the death penalty positively. In France, for example, President Mitterrand abolished the death penalty in 1982 despite 62% percent of the French being retentionists; only last year did poll support dip for the first time below 50%. Two-thirds of the German population favored the death penalty at the time of its abolition. Today 65-70% of Britons, nearly 70% of Canadians, a majority of Austrians, around 50% of Italians, and 49% of the Swedes favor its reinstatement.

It appeared that the ruling elite in these countries simply felt, for whatever reasons, that capital punishment should go. Why they felt so must have varied from country to country; the newest members of the European Union abolished capital punishment partly as a condition for entry into the EU, but partly too because they wanted to draw a line under the brutal communist system they had experienced.

The elite of the Western European countries were probably moved by the horrors of Nazism and Fascism during the Second World War, which may explain,

Europe witnessed serious efforts at continental abolition only in the immediate postwar period, starting with Italy in 1947 and Germany in 1949. In 1982, pursuant to one of François Mitterrand’s election promises, France followed suit.

-- ibid.

This timeline suggests that it was more a moral and perspectival shift than a decision taken from weighing the pros and cons.

But in time, familiarity with the absence of capital punishment produces an effect on public opinion. As noted above, the majority of the French have since become against the death penalty, 25 years after abolition.

To confound things further, I'd like to mention the data from a recent BBC survey of 3,000 teenagers aged 15–17, across 10 cities.

Source: BBC survey, published, Dec 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/04_12_06_gen_next.pdf

 
46% of London youths disagreed with the death penalty. This compares with Moravcsik's figure (above) of 70% of Britons in favour of capital punishment. It does look as if it is less a question of forming an opinion from rational consideration and more a matter of being used to a certain state of affairs and accepting it as normal. Having grown up in a society without capital punishment, the teenagers have gotten used to the idea.

What is stunning, and really begs explanation, is the figure of 80% against capital punishment among the youths of Lagos, Nigeria. 62% in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and 59% in Nairobi, Kenya. These are Third World cities, where life is harsh and crime rates high. By logical argument, they should be favouring the death penalty to deter others (like in Baghdad -- see the data above, though violence and insecurity in Iraq in 2006 is exceptionally high), so there seems to be some other explanation for these Nigerians, Brazilians and Kenyans holding the opinion they hold.

One possibility is that they simply do not trust their governments or judicial systems to use capital punishment wisely or fairly. In a sense, that would be a logical argument, but by the same token, one can say that they perceive the death penalty as something in a moral class of its own that requires a high standard of process, at the very least. In the absence of that standard, they don't agree with it.

Or, there could be another explanation, I don't know, but I think there is enough here to underscore my point: people do not only arrive at an opinion about the death penalty on the basis of rational considerations. This being so, death penalty abolitionists have to address the question of how they can share their sense of moral horror with others in order to engender a perspectival shift. 

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