Kick Drum Heart

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth– isn’t that the mantra humankind has clung to since law originated? Justice will be served, and the criminal will get what’s coming to them. Death will be repaid with death: it’s only right.
Thus is the intrinsically judgmental and hypocritical nature of human beings. Although each of us possess qualities just as sinful and monstrous as those of our brothers and sisters, we proceed to presume to know of and know best all that resides within any given soul.
Societies throughout the world over the course of history have taken upon themselves a personal duty to claim the lives of “evildoers.” Albert Camus writes, in the words of his protagonist, Meursault, “The papers were always talking about the debt owed to society. According to them, it had to be paid” (Camus 109). Yet it is society that insistently proclaims that the loss of life is the most tragic occurrence the world can see.
It is not unreasonable in the least to suggest (or even expect) that those guilty of offenses be punished. Imprisoned, shuttered away from those they might harm, they can bring no ill to the remainder of the population. It IS outrageous, however, to condemn a person to death. To take their life, their very existence? Would that not put the blood of a second victim upon society’s conscience? “Whereas, once again, the machine [in this case, society itself] destroyed everything: you were killed discreetly, with a little shame and with great precision” (Camus 112). That precision that the world today prides itself on should be directed less toward pointless carnage and more toward sense. To avenge one murder with a second does not alleviate loss– it elevates it. It does not eliminate grief, shelve mourning, or lessen the pain of those left to live. It only increases agony, and stirs resentment and simmering coals of rage.
A story is told in the Bible, of a sinner who is sentenced to death by stoning. Jesus was passing by, and the people looked to him for confirmation to know that their punishment was fitting. To their surprise (and some dismay), Jesus told them, “Whomever among you is blameless may cast the first stone.” Needless to point out, the criminal did not die that day.
There are no blameless of guiltless members in society to throw that stone, nor will there ever be. Who is capable of deeming whether a life should end?
The fact remains that the guilty party (like any other human) still possesses a potential and capacity for change. Meursault, a man who killed another in cold blood, is such an example. Simply because a man has done a terrible deed, he is not instantly evil. He does not transform into the devil. He is nothing more than a human being, as deserving as the next for a chance at love and redemption. Even the supposedly heartless, emotionless Meursault clamors for clemency, when his sentence (beheading) is arrayed before him. “I’d realized that the most important thing was to give the condemned man a chance. Even one in a thousand was good enough to set things right” (Camus 111). If he had not been faced with his own state-mandated demise, Meursault would have had enough time to reform, had he chose. There would have been a glimmer of opportunity there, through which he might have sought redemption. Had he time, he might have had a chance.
There was no time for Meursault. Confronted, as the clock ticked, with the possibility of the existence of a life after death, the previously Existentialist Meursault retreated into himself. He reformed, not through love, but through confusion and bitterness. He changed: but due to the reality of his looming execution he absorbed a whirling tide of rage and a lifetime of apathy. That hardened him, forced him into indifference. The rigidity of capital punishment resisted Meursault’s feeble attempts to change, and the unfortunate man’s fragile outlook shattered against it.
Nothing can rationalize the exchange of one life as the payment for another’s. The concept that a murder committed by the “people” and society is any more morally or logically sound or acceptable than a murder committed by anyone else is absurd. It does not matter that perhaps the one was innocent and the other a criminal. It doesn’t matter that one wielded a weapon. At the end of the day two families grieve. At the end of the day, two men are still dead.