Status Dynamics of the Death Penalty

Ossorio: It used to be I'd get a lot of easy questions. People are learning here. Let me start with this one. Could you discuss the status dynamics of the death penalty?

That one is fairly straightforward but it's not simple. It goes back to the notion of the degradation ceremony. If you recall, there are five conditions for a successful degradation ceremony. The first is that there is a community with a set of values such that adherence to that set of values is a requirement for being purely and simply one of us. Second, there are three statuses involved here: a denouncer, a witness, and a perpetrator. Third, the denouncer acts as a member in good standing of the community and he does this in two senses: One is that it takes a member in good standing in the community to be a denouncer. Secondly, that when the denouncer does his thing he is acting in the interest of the community and representing it rather than out of personal motivation.

Okay now those are the background conditions. There are two things that have to happen. The first is that the denouncer says to the witness that the perpetrator has committed an act, and he redescribes the act if necessary so that under the redescription it's a tautology that that's a violation of the community values. Second, the denouncer makes whatever case needs to be made to the effect that the act as redescribed is a genuine expression of the perpetrator's character. It is not to be explained away, for example, by reference to extreme circumstances or to unusual states of mind. Now if he does this, it follows that the perpetrator is not purely and simply one of us. That's the degradation. Now, what goes with degradation is a loss of behavior potential. And different violations call for different losses and different degrees of loss.

Now with that as a background, ask yourself, "What would happen if the perpetrator committed the most serious possible violation?" Well, it's basically a tautology that the loss of behavior potential would be the greatest possible. And what that amounts to is that either he is expelled from the community or he is put to death. Well, that's the status dynamics of the death penalty. It's reserved for the most serious violations. And it is a degradation that is as extreme as the violation. Now there is more to be said but basically that's what I would call the status dynamics of the death penalty. Any commentary on that?

Member of Audience: I have a couple of them. One is that I think that in the forensics literature there is a discussion of "competency to be executed" such that if, for example, someone who has been sentenced to death goes into a coma, he may not be eligible for execution. And I think that there was a recent incident of that...

Member of Audience: So he wasn't psychotic at the time of the crime but became schizophrenic since then and they can't kill him because ...

Member of Audience: Right.

Member of Audience: You've got to know what's happening to you.

Ossorio: Yeah.

Member of Audience: And it strikes me like an incomplete degradation if the person doesn't quite know what is happening to him.

Ossorio: It sounds like the reasoning is that you have to be, if not a member in good standing, at least a member in some substantial sense. You have got to have something that can be taken away from you. Now in these cases basically the person has become a non-person, that is, he has become so disabled that he isn't really a responsible participant in the society.

Member of Audience: He is also no longer the person who committed the crime.

Ossorio: Something like that. So what it amounts to is you can't take it away from him if he doesn't have it.

Member of Audience: You also said that as a condition in the description that the person's behavior couldn't be explained away by...

Ossorio: Yeah, well what was stipulated is not that he was in an unusual frame of mind at the time he committed the crime. That's what that condition is for. It's that after the whole thing is over, something happens.

Member of Audience: Any comments on the status of the individual or the entity that makes the pronouncement that condemns to death?

Ossorio: Say that again.

Member of Audience: Any comments on the status of the individual who exacts the punishment, no, not who exacts the punishment but who does the condemning?

Ossorio: Okay, the question is any comments on the status of individual who does the condemning. I think that's simple sociology. Either you have an institutionalized form, a court that passes the judgment, or it happens from the participants who are around. You get a mob and they say "Kill the bastard". That's one way of deciding. And sometimes you have the institution and sometimes you don't.

Member of Audience: What about the difference between exiling the person vs. putting him to death?

Ossorio: Okay, what about the difference between what I described as the two most extreme, mainly exiling the person vs. putting him to death. Reflect on when classically one does one and when one does the other. Exiling a person is what you do when you just want to get rid of him. You don't want to bothered by him anymore. This is a noxious person, a destructive person, something like that. You put the person to death when society has suffered from this person, where in effect he has attacked us, where the violation is a violation of us. Remember, provocation elicits hostility.

Member of Audience: Having families and friends of victims come forward in trials has increased the number of denouncers, like we saw last night in the trial of the fellow who murdered Polly Klaas. The father came forward. It was an incredible denouncing mechanism, far more effective than saying "I sentence you to death." The father said, "You deserve to die." So we have added that community representation rather than just... It's a full-fledged ceremony.

Ossorio: Yeah, I think that has arisen recently in response to a general feeling that too much attention was being paid to the perpetrator's rights and not enough to the victim's rights. At least that's the form in which you read about in the newspaper.

Member of Audience: Do you have any thoughts about contrasting two societies, one where they did not do a death penalty and one where they did a fairly significant amount, and what that might say about the society or those people?

Ossorio: Not too much because in different societies, different violations and different degrees of violations would be possible. And if you wanted to give a benign interpretation of the difference between two societies, one of which had a lot of death penalties and the other didn't, I would say, "Well the one provides lots of opportunities for severe violations and the other doesn't. And so you get a lot of them here and therefore a lot death penalties, and over here you don't."

Member of Audience: But there are just as serious crimes in some other countries that just have said it is savage and uncivilized to have the death penalty no matter what someone does. You know, we just don't think it is right to take another life. Period. It's uncivilized. And they may not have as much crime but just as serious crimes have occurred.

Ossorio: You can take that position, and as you say some countries have. But the ones that do have a death penalty have a response to that. They say you are trivializing the violation by treating it as a trivial violation.

Member of Audience: By not having a death penalty?

Ossorio: Yeah.

Member of Audience: Does this mean you are in favor of the death penalty?

Ossorio: Only as a last resort. [laughter]

Member of Audience: Why should we let you off that easily?

Ossorio: It all depends. [laughter] Okay, looks like we are ready to move on to another one.

Contents | Next
© 1997 PGO