Dear George,

I am reading Sister Helen Prejean's "Dead Man Walking" and came upon this quote by Albert Camus...."'Society proceeds sovereignly to eliminate the evil ones from her midst as if she were virtue itself...To assert, in any case, that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no one in his right mind will believe this today.'"

Prejean further quotes Camus when he addresses the moral contradiction inherent in a policy which imitates the violence it claims to abhor...

"'Many laws consider a premeditated crime more serious than a crime of pure violence...For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life'"... from Camus essay, Reflections on theGuillotine (1957)...

Since it is possible to incarcerate violent criminals for life, it is hard to understand why there is such a widespread emotional attachment to the death penalty. Something in this Camus quote makes me wonder whether our Governor and General Assembly's reluctance to even consider a moratorium on executions is connected to our same reluctance to look at any of our past moral contradictions, such as slavery and the genocide of Native Americans. To accept a moratorium would amount to a confession that our society is not virtuous and not strong enough to stomach dealing death to the unvirtuous. A moratorium and/or abolition of capital punishment is thus seen and felt as a sign of weakness. I was very proud of our City Council when it called for the moratorium. It's resolution is an open recognition of the importance of this moral issue for every one, and not just for the poor saps sent to their deaths by the state.

Bill Davis (electronic mail, March 6, 2000)

bdavis@cstone.net