Bernard Shaw's Remarkable Religion: A Faith That Fits the Facts

68 Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable Religion
sons is a reason to ban the death penalty is nonsense. Or rather, it is nonsense
unless you honestly believe that the imprisonment of innocent persons
is an acceptable alternative to their execution. If innocent persons are
being condemned, whether to prison or the electric chair, the problem lies
in the process by which guilt is determined, not in the nature of the sentence.
Shaw responded to this argument with strained patience: “But really
you cannot handle criminals on the assumption that they may be innocent.
You are not supposed to handle them at all until you have convinced
yourself by an elaborate trial that they are guilty” (“Imprisonment” 883).
The final argument of the abolitionists is similar. Capital cases, they point
out, cost more because of the lengthy appeals process. But the purpose of
the appeals is to ensure that the progress of justice has been scrupulously
fair. It either performs that function or it is a waste of time and money. If it
is not needed, it should be eliminated; if it is needed, then it is appropriate
whether or not the prisoner is under sentence of death. Indeed, if that is
the case, then the existence of the death penalty assures the scrupulous
examination of criminal charges that should be the right of all accused.
These arguments are not forgivable rationalizations for an admirable
humanitarian impulse; they are dangerously irresponsible evasions. That
is the philosophical reason why Shaw preferred the horror of killing to the
horror of imprisonment. The former forces the judges to be honest, to face
the fact that they cannot avoid inflicting an injury on fellow human beings.
It is not the sadists or the self-righteous moralists but the squeamish
reformers who have made the modern prison such a diabolical instrument
of torture (861). They are seeking their “own salvation, not that of the
lawbreaker” (864). They do not seek it honestly. The trouble with the arguments
against capital punishment is that they convict their presenters of
indifference to very real evils, the solid evidence for which they have
themselves painstakingly researched. If you are to fight social ills effectively,
you must be willing to be honest about their true nature. The last
rationalization—that a capital sentence costs the taxpayers more than a
life sentence—is the most damning. If the extra cost of appeals reflects
nothing more than foot-dragging and cowardice, then the hardhearted
death advocates are right: the process should be speeded up and the expensive
delays eliminated. If they are really needed to ensure that justice is
done, then the humanitarians are arguing, in effect, that we could economize
on crime by skimping on the protection of the innocent.
This is virtually Shaw’s last word on the subject: