Is the Death Penalty Vegan?

Jun 15, 2020

"Our greatest strength lies in the gentleness and tenderness of our heart."
-Rumi

Informed

In high school, I was eager to form opinions on complex subjects -- abortion, gun control, politics -- things that my peers also were thinking about. Mostly, I did this to try to fit in with my friends, as they seemed to already have discovered their stance on these hot topics while I was still floundering. It always caused me significant stress to even attempt to determine where I stood on these issues because I was terrified of drawing a line in the sand; I worried about claiming to be one way while I wasn't entirely convinced.

But there was always a part of me that wanted to introspect, to spend time thinking about how and why I feel certain ways about certain issues. (The answer is that most of the conclusions I came to were based almost entirely on what my family and friends thought, which is understandable for a teenager.) What I failed to realize is that the world isn't as black-and-white as I thought it was, as I wanted it to be, and I no longer feel the need to form concrete opinions on complex topics. Instead, I've decided to view the world in a certain way, to live so that I am creating as much good as possible for everyone and everything.

And one of the ways I do that is my very firm stance on the death penalty, so it's probably not shocking that I -- as a vegan -- am completely against it. This is one of the few opinions I formed in high school that I haven't abandoned. For some reason, and I remember this very clearly, I had to write a short paper on the death penalty in a psychology class. I wrestled in my head about the pros and cons: fewer resources used to keep them alive vs. killing, they did bad things vs. killing, and on and on. But I kept coming back to the thought nagging at the back of my head that it doesn't matter how bad I may have thought these people were. I didn't know them or their struggles. All I knew was that if it were me on death row, I would want someone to speak up on my behalf. And if it were me tasked with administering the lethal injections, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing I, a good and kind person, had legally been allowed to take the lives of other people.

But They're "Bad" People

There's no such thing as bad and good, especially regarding humans. When we start taking justice into our own hands, dictating what is right and wrong according to our personal philosophy, things can get dangerous pretty quickly. A civilized society should not have laws based on revenge for past actions. An eye for an eye, fighting fire with fire, these things don't do anything other than exacerbate underlying problems in our society. Maybe we should live more by turning the other cheek, letting those without sin cast the first stone. The truth is that we've all committed wrongs in our lives, some worse than others, but capital punishment will never prevent people from making mistakes. Instead of threatening violence, we should be accepting of flaws.

Now, please don't misunderstand. I'm not going to sit here and mourn someone like Ted Bundy; he was a disgusting, despicable person, and I feel no remorse over his death. However, that doesn't mean I morally agree with killing him. Even though he was a monster, I don't believe that warrants legalized murder. And I'm not afraid to admit that when I've watched documentaries about serial killers and their executions, seeing other law-abiding, civilized, humane citizens laugh at the death of another human, joke about it, scream with righteous anger that they deserve it, I can't help but feel ashamed of our society. We say that killing is wrong, and yet we condone it -- even glorify it -- when it comes to people we don't like.

Prison Food

One of the main issues I have with keeping inmates jailed instead of killing them off is the tremendous toll on limited resources it takes to keep each individual alive: food, water, energy, clothes, bedding, space, activities. But what I hate the most is the food, because then we're not only incarcerating humans but we're also forcing enslaved animals into slaughterhouses to be turned into food for these people. And I'm sure that prison food isn't much to write home about; ironically, inmates' last meals are probably the best food they ever get while imprisoned. I guess when you're about to be killed, then you're allowed to be treated with some decency.

We learned a while back in "How the Education System Brainwashes Children" that baby food -- along with companion animal food, fast food, and other cheap animal-based products -- sometimes contains rotting meat, turning green and crawling with maggots. And other cheap meat products are often created with "downed" animals, generally dairy mothers and egg-laying hens that are too old, weak, or unproductive to produce enough milk or eggs to continue being financially beneficial. I'm pretty sure the government doesn't want to spend too much money feeding prisoners "better" foods (of course, there's really no such thing as long as animal products are being served) and would much prefer to pinch a penny by serving them the cheapest foods possible.

But, of course, let's not forget the real victims here. Because even though prisoners and ex-convicts always face discrimination, at least they're not the ones being bred, raised, and killed just to satisfy the tastebuds of some humans. Animals shouldn't have to suffer because we like to eat them, regardless of whether you've been in prison most of your life or you've never gotten so much as a speeding ticket. Animal agriculture and all other animal exploitation industries are the real prisons of our society, except they're actually even worse: they offer no escape, they offer no happy ending, they offer no mental or physical stimulation, they offer nothing to their prisoners yet take everything away from them. Animal agriculture is worse than prison; it's hell on earth.

Despite all this, I still can't in good conscience support the death penalty. As I said above, it is not my decision who gets to live or die, and even though keeping just one human alive condemns hundreds of animals to death each year, I can't say that the human's life is less valuable and should be sacrificed to save the animals. That goes against everything I believe in as a vegan because it's not my choice to make. We shouldn't have to choose between two evils, to choose who lives and who dies. There must be a better option.

The Humane Myth

No matter how you try to spin it, there's nothing humane about taking someone's life. Just like we take extra steps to "humanely" slaughter cows and pigs and goats, like stunning them before stabbing their throats, we take similar steps when "humanely" executing prisoners. Lethal injections are actually a series of three injections: an anesthetic, a paralytic, and finally, the drug to induce cardiac arrest.[1] The thing is, just like with nonhuman animals, these don't always work the way they're supposed to.

Since doctors have a moral obligation to not kill people, as they follow the Hippocratic oath, lethal injections generally aren't performed by healthcare professionals. When it comes to something as important as this (I mean, anesthesiology is its own medical field, so how can we expect someone that isn't even a doctor or nurse to do it properly?), and if we truly want to make death as painless as possible for these people, shouldn't we have a better system in place to virtually guarantee things go off without a hitch? Or maybe we just don't care enough to do anything about it.

The Trauma of Killing

It's not robots executing prisoners. These are real people, people that, even if they believe in capital punishment, probably don't enjoy killing other humans. Just like slaughterhouse workers don't enjoy murdering innocent animals. Since we know lethal injections often don't work as they're meant to, how would it feel to know that you messed up the injection, that you caused this person to be shot with a substance akin to having fire injected in their veins, to know that they suffered horribly before their heart finally stopped?[1] If it were me, I don't know how I'd be able to live with the thought that I not only killed someone, but made their last moments of their one and only life about as miserable and painful as humanly possible.

But irrespective of the past few paragraphs, the specifics of the deaths really don't matter because, even if everything worked as it's supposed to, that doesn't change the fact that killing is wrong. Sure, it would be less horrific, but that doesn't mean it's acceptable. Capital punishment isn't the answer. What we need is reform.

Reform, Not Punish

Prison reform is something I've grown increasingly passionate about over the years. Most people don't go to jail because they're "bad people." As I said earlier, there's no such thing. But for the majority of people in prison, society has failed them in some way: either making it easier for them to live in jail than to be homeless and/or unemployed, creating a society in which white-collar crime is accepted, cementing divisions between races and cultures that create fear and drive people to crime, not taking mental health issues seriously, etc. Humans are imperfect beings, and that will never change, but we should be focusing on trying to reform inmates, to encourage them and provide them with opportunities for a life away from crime.

Again, let me reiterate that focusing on reforming inmates will not always work. To continue with my Ted Bundy analogy from earlier, I don't know if people like that can be helped; in all honesty, I don't really believe that they can. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Besides, the vast majority of people in prison are not nearly as bad as Bundy. Serial killers, serial rapists -- people that feel a desire to harm others -- are an incredibly small portion of the population and we shouldn't let the few irreformable prevent us from helping everyone else. Instead of focusing on all the ways prison reform might not work for those people, we should focus on doing whatever we can to make it work for everybody else.

Certainly, little ol' me doesn't have all the answers, and I won't claim to even begin to understand how to implement these kinds of systemic changes in the prison system and in the laws themselves. But what I know without a doubt is that killing is wrong. And in order to prevent the unnecessary deaths of other humans, we need to take serious action to change the way our society deals with crime and treats criminals, just as we need to change the way we interact with other animals and the planet.

Is It Vegan?

So, after everything I've laid out, can vegans support the death penalty? If we take the most basic definition of veganism, inferring that it applies only to nonhuman animals, then, yes, vegans don't have to be against the death penalty. However, I believe this is more of a question of should we support it, not can we support it. My personal interpretation of the definition is that it applies to all animals, including humans. Additionally, vegans are in a unique position of speaking up for the most abused beings on the planet, the ones that no one else cares to even think about. I'd argue that we have a moral responsibility to also speak up for other forgotten victims.

be conscious, be kind, be vegan

Source

[1] "Lethal Injections: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)"