Crime and punishment
by Daniel Pretorius
We live in a world afflicted by rampant violent crime. Murder, assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, rape and sexual assault occur with such regularity that much of it receives no coverage in the news media. We have become inured to the prevalence of violent crime.
Very often, the targets of violent crime are entirely innocent – randomly selected by the perpetrators for no reason other than their vulnerability. This is especially true in the case of femicide and other forms of gender-based violence. Consequently, many people favour a criminal justice system that imposes harsh penalties on offenders. Many people believe that the death penalty should be imposed by way of retribution or deterrent.
In South Africa, capital punishment was declared unlawful by the Constitutional Court in the case of S v Makwanyane (1995). The Court found that the death sentence destroys life and annihilates human dignity (both of which are protected by our Constitution), and that it amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment (which is prohibited by the Constitution).
Capital punishment has recently come under the spotlight after the bungled execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee, USA. Ms Pike was convicted of murder in 1995 when, aged eighteen, she killed a seventeen-year-old girl at a youth camp. She was sentenced to death. After several failed appeals and more than thirty years on death row, Ms Pike’s execution by lethal injection was scheduled to occur on 30 September 2026. Two injections of pentobarbital (one of which should have sufficed to kill her) were administered to her. However, she remained alive. Ultimately, the execution was halted, and Ms Pike (then unconscious) was hospitalised.
Empirical research indicates that countries that impose capital punishment typically do not have lower violent crime rates. Countries with relatively low violent crime rates generally do not have capital punishment. In other words, capital punishment is not necessarily an effective deterrent.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§2267) says the following:
“Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. … [M]ore effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption. Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” [Francis, Address to Participants in the Meeting organised by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, 11 October 2017].
Accordingly, it has been written that, for Catholics, Christa Pike’s guilt does not erase her dignity: https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/catholics-christa-pikes-guilt-does-not-erase-her-dignity. This does not mean that she should be exonerated. But perhaps, instead of being put to death, she (and other convicted criminals) should be afforded the opportunity of new life and regeneration.
