rssCan the Death Penalty for Terrorists Fuel Violence?
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 8:25 am
- 13 Comments
Attorney General Eric Holder (WDCpix)
When Attorney General Eric Holder announced earlier this month that the suspected plotters of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would be tried in civilian court, he also promised to seek the death penalty for all of them. But the heated debate that followed over the supposed dangers of trying “the worst of the worst” in a New York federal court has largely eclipsed the question of whether the death penalty is actually the best punishment for convicted terrorists.
[Law1]Some of the men have not only proudly claimed responsibility for the attacks, but also said that they want to be executed and martyred. Setting aside any moral concerns about the ultimate punishment, it’s not clear in this case whether the death penalty would act as a deterrence or an incitement to other potential terrorists. When it comes to jihadists who willingly risk or relinquish their own lives for their cause, is the death penalty really such a good idea?
“It is in the strategic interests of the United States to deny these most heinous Al Qaeda terrorists what they want most: martyrdom,” wrote Ken Gude, associate director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at the Center for American Progress, in a report released earlier this month. “Al Qaeda will exploit an execution by the U.S. government as a significant propaganda victory, no matter how fair and legitimate the trial,” he added in an article in The Guardian.
Even former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said last year that he hoped that these men would not be executed. Asked by students at the London School of Economics in 2008 whether he thought the Sept. 11 defendants, who were then facing military commission trials, should get the death penalty, he said: “I kind of hope they don’t get it. Because many of them want to be martyrs and it’s kind of like the conversation, you know, between the sadist and the masochist. The masochist says ‘Hit me’ and the sadist says ‘No.’ So I am kind of hoping they don’t get it.”
Other legal experts agree, but for different reasons. “I think the fact that the defendants want to be executed shouldn’t count either way,” said Michael Dorf, a law professor at Cornell University, who advocated against the death penalty for these suspects when they faced military commission trials last year. “However, I do think it is legitimate for the government to worry about the possible counter-productivity of the death penalty here. That is, if the government had concluded that executing [Khalid Shaikh Mohammed], et al were likely to substantially aid Al Qaeda in recruiting, a decision not to seek the death penalty could be based in part on that worry.” According to Dorf, executing the men not only wouldn’t deter other terrorists from committing similar crimes, but could even encourage them.
This debate comes at a difficult time for President Obama and his attorney general. The president has promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center by Jan. 22, but faces huge challenges. Those range from where to try the suspected terrorists housed there to where to send those that have been cleared for release but can’t be sent home due to potential persecution or political instability. Republicans, citing the dangers to the United States of trying terrorists on our soil and claiming the terrorists don’t deserve the rights accorded to criminal defendants in federal court, have pushed to try most terror suspects in military commissions. Many Democrats, prominent legal experts and former military leaders, on the other hand, have argued that civilian federal courts are better-equipped to handle such cases and would confer a legitimacy on the trials that is critical to restoring the United States’ reputation around the world. In deciding to try the Sept. 11 suspects in federal court, then, the Obama administration is eager to look like it’s still being tough on terrorism and its perpetrators. That may be influencing the decision to seek the death penalty.
Other countries have faced similar debates in the face of repeated terrorist attacks, and ultimately decided that executing terrorists was counterproductive. Although the death penalty is now outlawed in all European Union countries, when the U.K. House of Commons debated whether to repeal the death penalty in Northern Ireland in 1973, there was widespread agreement that executing terrorists, who often wanted to martyr themselves, would only lead to increased violence and terrorism.
The question raises a classic conundrum for criminal law theorists. Punishment in the American justice system is supposed to punish the criminal in a way that seems proportionate to the crime and also deter others from committing similar acts. But if suicide bombers are blowing themselves up for the cause, how much of a deterrent is the death penalty to these sorts of terrorists?
“It doesn’t make sense as a deterrent,” said Columbia Law Professor Jeffrey Fagan in an email. “Deterrence assumes a rational actor who perceives that the punishment costs exceed the benefits of the crime, and who will not act against his or her own self-interest. in this case, the punishment is no match for either the rewards of striking a significant blow at ‘The Great Satan’ or the rewards of martyrdom.”
Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, agrees. “Terrorists expect to die or want to die,” he said. “There’s a chance that the death penalty feeds into that.” After the federal death penalty in the U.S. was expanded in 1994 to include terrorism, Dieter notes, “the very next year Timothy McVeigh blows up the Oklahoma federal building. So I don’t think anybody believes it’s much of a deterrent. It might even be an attractor.”
Of course, another purpose of criminal punishment is retribution. Under that theory, the criminal is supposed to get his just desserts –– an eye for an eye, in biblical terms. “For retribution, it doesn’t matter what his preferences are,” says Claire Finkelstein, professor of law and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
“Simply put, these monsters who specifically target civilians have no right to live,” wrote Rabbi Stuart Weiss, director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Ra’anana,in a recent op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, arguing that Israel, which has abolished the death penalty for almost all crimes, should reinstate it for terrorists. “They have forfeited the most basic human privilege by virtue of their crimes; any punishment save death is too good for them and is an obscene insult to the grieving victims of terror.”
It’s the classic notion of retribution. “The idea is that you return to the defendant what he has inflicted on the victim,” said Finkelstein. She herself doesn’t really think that’s possible, though. “There is no way to kill this man nearly 3,000 times, or force him to experience what his victims suffered as they tried to escape the twin towers,” she said.
Still, logical and even strategic considerations are often not what guides such decisions.
“There’s a lot of politics involved,” says Dieter. The Obama administration’s latest decisions on closing Guantanamo and trying terror suspects in federal court has opened it up to a rash of criticism from conservatives . “Maybe it’s part of this total picture that we’re closing this prison down there but that doesn’t mean we’re going to be soft on them,” said Dieter. “Once you open up the whole political world, the calculations are different.”
13 Comments
Trackback posted November 25, 2009 @ 10:49 am
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by TWI_news: Can the Death Penalty for Terrorists Fuel Violence? http://bit.ly/6jpcyG...
Comment posted November 25, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
The death penalty is not a suitable for anyone. Killing is wrong, and killing someone to show how wrong it is simply stupid.
Comment posted November 26, 2009 @ 12:00 am
Religon or it's interpetation, has no buisness in deciding if the death penality is
OK……what kind of wuz's have we become. If he's guilty and put to death, what do we care if 100 virgins welcome them to the life after, or if they become martyrs. Just follow the law !
svivar9087
Comment posted November 26, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
This is a surface level article on a surface level debate. Here's the REAL issue: if so-called mainstream Muslims claim that the terrorists have “hijacked” the religion – but they do NOTHING to dissuade the terrorists – then it's not a “hijacking” it's merely different pilots flying in a different direction. IF so-called mainstream Muslims truly believe the terrorists have “hijacked” the religion, then by definition the terrorists are heretics and are NOT muslims and they should either be disowned or actually have fatwas of death entered against them.
Mainstram Islam cannot have it both ways: they cannot declare TO THE WEST that the terrorists “don't represent Islam” but then allow the terrorists to continue under the label of “muslim.”
If what the terrorists teach and do is antithetical and anathema to Islam, then the terrorists are NOT muslims. And if mainstream Islam is not denying the teachings of the terrorists, then mainstream Islam must be endorsing those teachings.
For example: if I declare myself to be a believer in Santa Claus, and yet I actively campaign against Christmas and giving gifts and believing in characters like Santa Claus, and I tear down displays and attack shoppers at Christmas time – I am NOT a believer in Santa Claus, not matter what my WORDS are.
Just so – if the ACTS and TEACHINGS of the terrorists are NOT in line with Islam, then they are NOT muslims and Islam should be trying to excise them and distance them. As I said, Islam cannot have it both ways.
(and for the inevitable “Tim McVeigh response”: he did not commit mass murder in the name of Christianity, and no Christian organization endorsed, condoned, or supported his actions.)
Comment posted December 5, 2009 @ 12:35 am
The issue seems to whether to award 9/11 main accused if found guilty be punished with death penalty or with life sentence. Prominent legal experts have taken part in the deliberation and also left their opinion.
Yes, it is always appreciable to take time to think all prose and cones before a taking any final decision on a serious matter that may have multiple adverse impact on national matters in future should be thoroughly vetted.
Once the vetting has been properly done then all the opinion of the legal experts should be thoroughly debated and a decision is be kept in reserve if in case its use becomes essential to use.
While seeking for the best result to come out with the best of the decision concerned personalities responsible to formulate and finalize the decision must remember as we human being nothing can be perfect.
Comment posted December 7, 2009 @ 4:49 pm
So the fearless doctor killers of the Christian pro-rapist forced birth movement do represent Christianity at large, by this reasoning, making all Christians de facto murderers and terrorists.
America, as an allegedly Christian nation, is therefore guilty of greater crimes against humanity simply because of the scale of our atrocities against non-Christians. The Vietnam War, overthrows in Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, etc. etc. ad nauseum. We have blood swirling around our necks and rising. Therefore, Christians by your logic are even worse than Joe Islam who never went on a jihad.
Golly the broad brush paints really broadly.
Comment posted December 8, 2009 @ 3:47 am
It certainly can especially if you're prone to using violence to express your point of view.
Comment posted December 24, 2009 @ 6:03 pm
NATO ABSOLUTELY UNITED IN UNCIVILIED BEHAVIOR
[Designed for Special Category]
Now, we are told by the Secretary General of [NATO] the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark, that countries now involved in the American-Israeli War of Economic Stimulus, of Resources and Markets, Blood for Oil on the Islamic Crescent, are absolutely united, and that means by placing [IFF] Islamic Freedom Fights, into the [SPECIAL CATEGORY of TERRORIST] as defined by the Empire not qualified or afforded the protections of the Third Geneva Conventions, relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, defining the humanitarian protections of prisoners of war.
[EMPIRE SPECIAL CATEGORY PROTECTION]
Under Article [51.3] Fifty-One-Point Three, of the Commentary both lawful and unlawful combatants may be interned in wartime, interrogated prosecuted for war crimes. Both are entitled to humane treatment in the hands of their captures, but according to the American-Israeli Empire this does not extent to the newly created special category of prisoners know as [IFF/TERRORIST], which would mean that [NATO] is now on board for the caging up of special category prisoners, up to either natural death of old age, or death due to unlimited use of torture, treatment that animals in a zoo would never be subjected to, and animals that are to be euthanized are subjected, denying the protections, under Article [3] Three, called the Convention in miniature, stating that all prisoners, shall in [ALL] circumstances be treated humanely, including prohibition of outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment. And any legal proceeding against such prisoners must also be pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording [ALL/NOT JUST WHAT THE EMPIRE THINKS IS PROTECTION UNDER SPECIAL CATEGORY TREATMENT] judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
[A MODERN CIVILIZED SOCIETY?]
And how is this washing of their hands and turning a blind eye accomplished, well the allegations of detainee torture are about a problem in Afghanistan that is beyond our control, is the response of those who have been placed in the highest levels of both those appointed to [NATO] and those governments absolutely, against the [SPECIAL CATEGORY TERRORIST PRISONERS], after all we just turned captured [Terrorist] over to local forces, who were trained and supervised by Empire [CIA] Central Intelligence Agency agents, and mercenary operatives. The idea being well we didn’t torture or break international law or the Geneva conventions they did, not us we are conforming to transfer systems agreed upon by diplomats, It’s out of our control, its not our problem, [I WAS ONLY FOLLOWING ORDERS], its not our issue its theirs, its not our job to monitor detainees treatment upon transfer. Never mind that under the Geneva Conventions sets out a legal responsibility for forces handing over detainees, and that no human being should be transferred into the custody of those who will not abide by the Geneva Conventions, so much for being a civilized modern society.
HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN
Comment posted December 27, 2009 @ 4:07 am
To those who believe that the death sentence achieves nothing.
A simple rule. A dead terrorist can not kill again.
In Northern Ireland two terrorists who were released under the Good Friday Agreement have been arrested for the recent murder of two British Soldiers.
Comment posted January 10, 2010 @ 4:48 pm
A terrorist who spends the rest of his life in prison will never kill again either, but if we kill him, others will be encouraged to kill in his name.
Comment posted January 26, 2010 @ 7:07 pm
These terrorists kill no matter what, they don't need to be encouraged and you cannot discourage them either. They kill because that is part of their being, believe, their way of life. This has been a way of life for them long before the United States existed, going back a few thousand years.Their values, ideas,hopes, etc.. are different from those of Americans, the problem is Americans look at it from the American point of view, based on American laws, moral standards, freedom of choice,speech, economics. Their cultures are on a complete different hemisphere than that of Americans.
Comment posted February 6, 2010 @ 9:20 am
Welcome to our website: http://www.wowhotsale.com
The website wholesale for many kinds of fashion shoes, like the nike,jordan,prada,adidas, also including the jeans,shirts,bags,hat and the decorations. All the products are free shipping, and the the price is competitive, and also can accept paypal payment.,after the payment, can ship within short time.
free shipping
competitive price
any size available
We do wholesale and retail! All are extremely CHEAP, please visit: http://www.wowhotsale.com
wfwef
Pingback posted March 27, 2010 @ 4:19 pm
[...] Can the Death Penalty for Terrorists Fuel Violence? « The … [...]
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
