BY POPULAR DEMAND

Of Course, The Death Penalty Is Cruel And Unusual. That's What People Like
About It.
- - Danziger

The president, concededly, a "pro-lifer," has turned around and consented
to the execution by lethal gas of two convicts, saying that the death
penalty is a "legal weapon" that should be used by the state "to arrest the
upsurge of crimes."

There has, of course, been a long-standing argument about the effectiveness
of the death penalty in arresting crimes, in spite of the testimony of Bob
Garon, a former priest, who said that the execution of a drug pusher in the
early days of martial law eliminated or reduced the traffic in drugs, a
proposition that is at best still needs statistical proof.

On the other hand, writers like Albert Camus and Arthur Koestler have
written long essays against capital punishment, while nothing in favor of
it has been written by any writer or philosopher. The exception was one
James Howell, who lived in the 17th century, who said, "Who hangs one
corrects a thousand." By and large, the usual supporters are obviously
enthralled with the Mosaic law: "Your eye shall not pity; it shall be life
for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."
Undoubtedly, a compelling proposition even to this day.

As late - or recent - as 1962, however, Edward Bennett Williams, showed in
"One Man's Freedom," that capital punishment was inhuman because "its
effects are now recognized as myth." Furthermore, "It is unequal because it
is exacted almost exclusively on the poor and the ignorant. It is, in
short, a relic of the barbarous days when the law demanded an eye for an eye."

As Sydney J. Harris wrote in his column for the Chicago Daily News, "One of
the oldest Russian proverbs remains inexorably true in modern America: 'No
one is hanged who has money in his pocket.' Or, one might say, capital
punishment is only for those without capital."

Writing for The Catholic Worker, Carl Siciliano and Meg Myre, reviewing the
US record since executions were resumed in 1977, concluded: "Though there
have been well over 2,500 white on black homicides nationally since 1977
(though 1987), not a single state has yet put to death a white who killed a
black." A black who kills a white is about sixty times more likely to be
executed than a black who kills a black.

However, it may be argued that the figures relate more to racism than to
capital punishment, but there's the fact that it's the poor who are
likelier to be punished and executed. Moralists say poverty is no excuse
for committing a crime, although our sociological police keep saying that
poverty is a major cause of criminality.

But reasoned arguments, nay, not even scholarly findings, can stand against
poll findings that 60 percent of Manila respondents are for the death
penalty. A leader who wants to be popular listens to popular demand.