All men fear pain and death, all men love life.
Remembering that he is one of them,
let a man neither strike nor kill.
- Dhammapada, 130
The Death Penalty — For and Against
The death penalty — or capital punishment — is considered the most severe form of punishment available in the world. It is a practice sanctioned by a government where a convicted criminal is sentenced to death as a punishment for grave crimes — usually called “capital crimes” or “capital offences” — which may include murder, treason, espionage, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and others. Contemporary methods of capital punishment include hanging, shooting, lethal injection and, in lesser occurrences, electrocution, gas inhalation and beheading.
According to the global human rights movement Amnesty International, in 2016 there were 1,032 people executed in 23 countries, not including China. In China, the exact numbers cannot be confirmed because the figures remain classified as a closely guarded secret of the state, but it is estimated the number of people executed annually in that country are in the thousands — executing more people than the rest of the other countries combined. Despite these numbers, there has been a significant decrease in executions by 37% since the previous year, and by the end of 2016, 104 countries had completely abolished the death penalty. “While there is a clear trend towards the abolition of capital punishment worldwide,” admitted special rapporteurs Christof Heyns and Juan E. Mendez at the World Day Against the Death Penalty, “it is regrettable we still need to mark such a day.”
It is safe to say that nearly all First World countries have abolished capital punishment either in law or in practice, a trend that began after the Second World War. The United States remains to be the only Western country to use the death penalty, while in Asia developed countries like China, South Korea, and Japan and also some Islamic states continue this practice.
The controversy over the implementation of capital punishment has delineated two opposing camps: the “retentionists” — those who are proponents of the death penalty — and the “abolitionists” — those who are against the death penalty. As of December 31, 2016, there are 141 countries that are abolitionists in law or in practice, which makes up more than two-thirds of the countries in the world, and there are 57 countries that are retentionists.
The supporters of capital punishment believe that death penalty is morally justified because it gives what is due to a criminal — a punishment worthy of their crime. This derives from the concept of retribution — an “eye for an eye” vengeful brand of justice. When justifying Japan’s stance to keep the death penalty, former Japanese Parliament member Tomoko Sasaki claimed, “A basic teaching [in Japanese Buddhism] is retribution. If someone evil does something bad, he has to atone with his own life. If you take a life, you have to give your own.” Retribution is therefore paid back by equal value, just like the symbolic “scales of justice.” The measure of the punishment inflicted should equalize that of the offense, according to Immanuel Kant, so much so that when the offense is murder it is capital punishment alone that is sufficient enough to equalize it. For those who may argue that this kind of retribution is no different from cold-blooded revenge Professor of Law at New York Law School, Robert Blecker, JD, makes the distinction that revenge knows no bounds whereas retribution is limited, proportional and appropriately directed. “We have the responsibility to punish those who deserve it, but only to the degree they deserve it…we [Retributivists] reject over-punishing no less than under-punishing.”
Death penalty proponents popularly justify capital punishment as an effective means of deterrent for future crime and prevention of criminal offenders from offending again. In a recent study conducted by research economists comparing the number of executions in different jurisdictions with homicide rates within the period of two decades the results indeed suggested that murder rates did decrease as executions increased. For each inmate put to death 3 to 18 murders are prevented. “I personally am opposed to the death penalty but my research shows that there is a deterrent effect,” said H. Naci Mocan, one of the economist researchers from Louisiana State University who found that each execution saves five lives.
Abolitionist and Professor of Law at Standford University, John J. Donohue III, PhD, on the other hand contends that there is not the slightest credible statistical evidence that the death penalty reduces the rate of crimes such as murder. Legal scholars have criticized the studies making the point that theories of economists cannot simply be applied to the “violent world of crime and punishment.” These studies are based on “faulty premises, insufficient data and flawed methodologies.”
Abolitionists also point out the discriminatory tendency of the death penalty where those who are poor or of racial, ethnic or religious minority are the most likely to be sentenced to death. For example, poor or marginalized groups have less access to legal aid to defend themselves. Dr. Alfredo P. Co, sharply points out that “the chronicles of societies that administer death penalty show that the punishment hardly, if at all, reach the affluent strata of society.” In the Philippines, more than 73 percent of people sentenced to death before 2006 earned less than 10,000 pesos a month, according to the Free Legal Assistance Group, a local NGO.
Because execution is irreversible, an irrevocable punishment, there is also the risk of executing an innocent person. Such wrongful execution is considered a miscarriage of justice. U.S. Senator Ernie Chambers, JD, asserts that more than 150 people in the last few years have been taken off death row because they were later proven innocent. “I know there are people who want to believe that no innocent person has ever been executed in this country,” appeals Senator Chambers, “But when you have this many people conclusively proved by DNA evidence to be actually innocent, there is no escaping the conclusion that innocent people have been executed.” Judicial mistakes and other dubious irregularities have been many in the Philippines. In 2004 the Supreme Court admitted that in nearly 72 percent of the 907 death penalty cases it had reviewed since 1993 had been wrongly imposed.
From a religious standpoint — especially an influential religion such as Roman Catholicism which dominates 80% of the population in the Philippines — capital punishment is generally condemned, emphasizing the sacred value and dignity of all human life. “The death penalty is contrary to the meaning of humanitas and to divine mercy, which must be models for human justice,” Pope Francis explained, in an address to the International Commission against the Death Penalty in 2015, “It entails cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.” But lately the influence of the Church has been waning due to public scandals and hypocrisy — a weakness the President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has been exploiting, especially to further his “War on Drugs” agenda.
If the teachings of Christ has become passé for the Filipinos, especially on the threshold of reinstating the death penalty in the country, perhaps it is worthy to look at a different spiritual or philosophical point of view. Indeed, Applegate and his research team proposes criminal research should examine religious influences outside of Christianity, such as Buddhism. Let us consider then the philosophy of the Buddha.
The Teachings of the Buddha
Buddhism has existed now for more than 2,500 years. It is a philosophical system and religion founded by Siddhartha Gautama who profoundly saw everything in this world as ultimately impermanent. The name Buddha is essentially a title meaning “the Enlightened One.”
The legend tells of how the baby Prince Siddhartha was prophesied to be either a great king of this world or a great king of the other world. The latter would be signified if the young prince would come across successively a monk, a crippled old man, a sick man, and a corpse. Upon hearing this prophecy, his father took all drastic measures for the young prince not to see these grim human realities outside the palace and thus secure his destiny to become a great king of this world. Years later when the Prince was already married and with son, he decided to take a walk and see the world outside the palace walls for the first time. Lo and behold, as fate has it, he indeed came across an old man, a sick man, a dead body and a holy monk in succession. The fruit of this eye-opening encounter was his first contact with suffering. Confounded by the inescapable reality of suffering in the world, Prince Siddhartha traveled alone to seek for answers to the problem of life and existence. It was when he fell into deep meditation under the famous Bodhi Tree, where he entered into the highest state of consciousness — Nirvana — and became the Buddha, the Enlightened One.
From this profound experience he derived the Four Noble Truths: (1) there is suffering, (2) there is a cause of suffering, (3) there is a cessation of suffering, and (4) there is a way leading to the cessation of suffering. From the fourth Noble Truth, recognizing there is an end to suffering and consequently a means to that end, he had developed the Noble Eightfold Path that would provide a guideline for a Buddhist way of life leading to enlightenment and ultimate liberation. The Noble Eightfold Path consists of: (1) Right Faith, (2) Right Resolve, (3) Right Speech, (4) Right Conduct, (5) Right Living, (6) Right Effort, (7) Right Attentiveness, and (8) Right Concentration. This path is otherwise known as the Middle Way and is thus called because — similar to Aristotle’s “golden mean” — it is a manner of striking the right balance between two extremes:
“There are two extremes O monks, from which he who leads a religious life must abstain: One is a life of pleasure devoted to desire and enjoyment; that is base, ignoble, unspiritual, unworthy, unreal. The other is a life of mortification: it is gloomy, unworthy, unreal. The perfect one O monk, is removed from both extremes and one has to discover the way which lies between them, the middle way.”
It was Nagarjuna, a brahmin-class second century Buddhist monk from India, that developed the Buddha’s teaching of the Middle Way into what we now call Madhyamika. Madhyamika consequently had a great influence on the popular Mahayana branch of Buddhism, especially with the concept of void or sunyata as a means to remedy the sufferings of samsara (the cycle of birth and death). According to the venerable Dr. Co, “It tells us that nothing exists in itself, but only as a part of a universal web of being.” When we consider this idea that all our individual experiences of life are inter-dependent, then actions such as killing another individual has new and profound implications.
The Buddhist ethical-moral system is founded on this Middle Path, which is loosely a collection of precepts, “not as commandments from a god or the buddhas, but as basic moral principles that one should discipline oneself to follow.” In other words, these can be seen as guidelines to be followed rather than objective laws to be obeyed. From the Dhammapada, the Buddha teaches, “You yourself must make the effort. Buddhas only point the way. Those who have entered the path and who meditate will be free from the fetter of illusion.” According to this moral ideal, Buddhists have to work for their salvation individually through their own power, “so that they are more responsible for their own weal and woe both in the present life and in the future.” And so part of most Buddhist rituals, faithful Buddhists would recite in unison the Five Precepts (panca sila), as follows:
I undertake to observe the precept of abstaining:
1. from destroying the life of living creatures
2. from taking things not given
3. from sexual misconduct
4. from false speech
5. from liquors that cause intoxication and heedlessness
The first of these precepts — the abstention from killing, which springs from the first sentiment of avoiding doing harm to one another — is the main moral preoccupation of this research.
In these preliminary considerations, we must also take into account the Buddhist doctrine of Karma (or the Pali word kamma) which is not to be confused with notions of “moral justice” or “reward and punishment” as one may commonly identify in the major Western religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The theory of karma is merely the theory of cause and effect, of action and reaction, a natural law and consequence that doesn’t involve a God who sits in judgment and decides what is right and wrong. Consequently, if one behaves contrary to the Five Precepts, then he will suffer in this life and in subsequent lives as a natural karmic outcome of his unwholesome action.
Buddhism and Killing
We must understand that the First Precept restrains Buddhists from killing any living being because all creatures are believed to be sacred. The death penalty, therefore, would be in direct conflict with this belief. This Precept would also include abortion, euthanasia and suicide.
In the case of abortion (or even contraceptives), it is stated in the Treasury of Metaphysics, “When a man places an obstacle to the birth of a new moment in the life faculty, he destroys it and commits the sin of murder.” It is said that the bad karma from a procured abortion varies according to the size of the fetus when it was aborted. In the case of euthanasia, the Vinaya says, “Whatever monk should intentionally deprive a human being of life, or should look about to be his knife-bringer, he is also one who is defeated and is no more in communion.” This was further amended by the Buddha to include mere incitement of death when a group of wicked monks enamored with the wife of a layman, tricked the husband into killing himself. Suicide (and assisted suicide), too, is condemned and explained as thus, “Buddhism holds that because death is not the end, suffering does not cease thereupon, but continues until the karma that created the suffering has played itself out; thus it is pointless to kill oneself — or aid another to do so — in order to escape.”
Dr. Nathan Tamblyn, a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director of Education at the University of Exeter Law School in the United Kingdom, wrote an interesting journal article entitled “Why is Killing Morally Wrong?” about the morality of killing from the Buddhist perspective. He claims that the main reason why killing is morally wrong is not because of the harm it does to the victim or to society but because killing causes harm to the killer.
Considering the Buddhist view that projecting inherent substance or value into something only causes us suffering and the emptying of such value extinguishes suffering, the act of killing consequently distances us from the truth of our reality. “Indeed,” Tamblyn reaffirms, “it tends to deny it.” Through the philosophy of Madhyamika Buddhism, Tamblyn establishes the significance of our connectedness, that “our individual experiences of life are all inter-dependent.”
He recalls the story of “Indra’s Net” from the Flower Garland Sutra (Avatamsaka Sutra) where there is an intricate net of multi-faceted jewels, and each jewel reflecting one another in an infinite accumulation of reflections. This is a perfect metaphor for our relations and connected experiences with other people. Thus when we kill another individual, we in turn, kill an ingredient in our own experience, “we introduce killing and death as an ingredient into our own life.” Plus there is the danger we will become even less compassionate, through the merciless reality of the karmic cycle — where every volitional action produces its corresponding effects and results, e.g. a bad action producing bad effects. Fundamentally, the death penalty as a punishment falls under a bad action.
When it comes to the discussion of capital punishment it is imperative that we consider all aspects including the victims and their families, the criminal, the executors of public justice and the general public. For example, when a State sanctions an execution it is necessary to involve third parties — the judge who delivers the sentence, the prosecutors who oversee it and the police who carry it out. These individuals, whether they are aware or not, will be partakers in the process of killing, and will thus be also subject to karmic justice.
In the spirit of protecting life, the First Precept not only discourages one not to take life oneself, but it also forbids the bystander from desiring death for others, praising killing, urging others to kill and other similar notions of hatred for one another. “Hence,” Sakya Chao-Fei asserts, “it is absolutely forbidden to use execution and death as a means of resolving problems.” Not only does the state and society draw a group of people into a network of hatred and killing but it means a model of violence and a culture of death is established by public authority itself.
In the Sakya Pandita, the work of a great Tibetan scholar, it is written, “Howsoever anyone breaks the law, they may win for a while, but in the end, they lose.” Even if someone gets away with a crime unpunished, ultimately, in the end, the offender will receive the appropriate karmic action. Therefore, karma — the law of cause and effect — surpasses any legal system on earth, without the inequities or the abuses prevalent in a human legal system. The death penalty would then be unnecessary “because the person who violates the law by committing murder will definitely bear the horrible, irreversible karmic consequences.”
Conclusion — The Way of Compassion
The Buddha teaches the way of compassion which is first and foremost the respect for life. Buddhists would prefer to rehabilitate even the most dangerous convicted killer to help find his or her Buddha-nature using the path to enlightenment. At the very least, religions such as Buddhism teaches or reminds us how to be better human beings and how to treat one another.
In certain Japanese districts where Buddhist influence is strong, statistics have shown cases of murder or assault to be relatively rare. Astonishingly, it is said that the brutal war-torn rough faces of Tibetan and Mongolian warrior races have been softened because of the way of compassion that Buddhism has provided.
With the rise of secularism some may argue that religion no longer has a strong influence in the world as it did before. Nevertheless, religion remains a powerful force in society, even in criminology and criminal justice. When Pope John Paul II visited St. Louis, Missouri in 1999 during his pastoral visit to the United States, he was able to influence Governor Mel Carnahan to change the death sentence of Darrell Mease to a life imprisonment without parole. Carnahan had already approved 26 executions in the past but had a change of heart after meeting with the pope.
In a lecture given at Harvard University, titled “Mahayana Buddhism and the Twenty-First Century Civilization,” Daisaku Ikeda discusses the importance of religion to a modern society, that it be: “(1) a driving force for creating peace; (2) that it contribute to restoring humanity, rejuvenating the human person; and (3) that it provide the philosophical basis for symbiotic coexistence.”
The death penalty cannot guarantee a safer and better legacy that we can leave for the next generation. Capital punishment and other acts of violence (e.g. extra-judicial killings) disguised as a solution to our present societal problems will only perpetuate the vicious cycle of death and our downward spiral of bad karma which is a suffering greater than any death sentence can inflict. Only compassion, as exemplified by the Buddha, can cease this once and for all, for ourselves and for our brethren. Buddhism teaches us the way from ignorance to knowledge, from suffering (samsara) to peace (nirvana), to a true union of existence and reality like Indra’s Net from the Flower Garland Sutra (Avatamsaka Sutra) where each individual is a multi-faceted jewel, sparkling with brilliance, reflecting one another to infinity.
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