Unit 6：Death andJustice How Ca pital Punishment Affirms Life 厦门最好玩的三个地方
死亡与司法死刑如何肯定生命
La st December a ma n named Robert L ee Willie, who h ad been convicte d of raping andmurdering an eig hteen-year-old w oman, was execut ed in the Louisi ana state prison. In a statement issued veralminutes before h is death, Mr. Wi llie said: “Kill ing people is wr ong… It makes no difference whet her it’s citizen s, countries, or governments. Ki lling is wrong.” Two weeks later in South Caroli na, an admittedkiller named Jos eph Carl Shaw wa s put to death f or murdering two teenagers. In a n appeal to thegovernor for cle mency, Mr. Shawwrote: “Killingwas wrong when I did it. Killing was wrong whenyou do it. I hop e you have the c ourage and moral strength to sto p the killing.”
去年12月，一个名叫罗伯特.李.威利的罪犯在路易斯安那州的监狱中被处决，罪名是强奸和谋杀一名18岁的女子。在其死亡前几分钟发表的一份声明中，威利先生说：“杀人是错误的... ... 无论是公民、国家，还是政府，都没有区别。杀人是不对的”。两周后在南卡罗来纳州，一个名为约瑟夫.卡尔.肖的杀人犯因为杀害两名青少年被处死。在上诉到州长请求宽恕时，肖先生说：“当我杀人时杀人是错误的。当你杀人时杀人也是错误的。我希望你有勇气和道德力量来阻止杀戮。”
.I t is a curiosity of modern lifethat we find our lves being lec tured on moralit y by cold-bloode d killer
s. Mr. W illie previously had been convic ted of aggravate d rape, aggravat ed kidnapping, a nd the murders o f a Louisiana de puty and a man f rom Missouri. Mr. Shaw committed another murdera week before th e two for whichhe was executed, and admitted mu tilating the bod y of the fourtee n-year-old girlhe killed.
I can’t help wonderin g what promptedthe murderersto speak out aga inst killing asthey entered the death-hou doo r. Did their new found reverencefor life stem fr om the realizati on that they wer e about to lotheir own?
冷血的杀人犯对我们进行道德说教，这真是现代社会的一件奇事。威利先生之前已经犯有恶性强奸罪、恶性罪和谋杀一名路易斯安那州副州长和一名密苏里州人的谋杀罪。肖先生在杀害致其被处死的两个人的一周前，还进行了另一起谋杀，他承认肢解了他所杀害的14岁女孩的身体。我不禁要问，是什么原因促使这些凶手在走入鬼门关的时候发表反对杀人的言论。他们重新发现对生命的尊重是源于意识到即将失去自己的生命了吗？
游戏案例
.Life is indeed p recious, and I b elieve the death penalty helps t o affirm this fa ct. Had the deat h penalty been a real possibilit y in the minds o f the murderer s, they might we ll have stayed t heir hand. Theymight have shown moral awareness before their vi ctims died, andnot after. Consi der the
tragic d eath of Rosa V el ez, who happened to be home when a man named Lui s V era burglariz ed her apartment in Brooklyn. “Y eah, I shot her,” V era admitted. “She knew me, a nd I knew I woul dn’t go to the c hair.”
生命无疑是宝贵的，我相信死刑可以肯定这一事实。如果这些杀人犯脑子里真想到过死刑的话，他们就可能会手下留情，就应该会在受害者死亡之前而不是之后表现出道德良知。考虑罗莎.贝莱斯的悲惨死亡，当一个名为路易斯.维拉的人在她布鲁克林的公寓内盗窃时，她碰巧回家。“是的，我射杀了她，”维拉承认。“她认识我，并且我知道我不会被处死刑。”
During my twenty-two y ears in public s ervice, I have h eard the pros an d cons of capita l punishment exp resd with spec ial intensity. A s a district lea der, councilman, congressman, an d mayor, I havereprented cons tituencies gener ally thought ofas liberal. Beca u I support th e death penaltyfor heinous crim es of murder, Ihave sometimes b een the subjectof emotional and outraged attack ed by voters who find my positio n reprehensibleor wor. I have listened to the ir ideas. I have weighed their o bjections carefu lly. I still sup port the death p enalty. The reas ons I maintain m y position can b e best understoo d by examining t he arguments mos t frequently hea rd in opposition.
在我二十多年的公共服务期间，我听过关于死刑利弊的种种表达。作为一个选区的领导人、议会议员、国会议员和市长，我代表了普遍被认为是自由派的选民。因为我支持对十恶不赦的谋杀判处死刑，我有时是选民情绪和愤怒的攻击对象，他们觉得我的立场应该受到攻击或者更糟。我听取了他们的想法，仔细权衡了他们的反对意见，但仍然支持死刑。我坚持自己立场的原因，可以通过剖析最常听到的反对观点来解释。
Rea son 1. The death penalty is “bar baric.”Sometime s opponents of c apital punishmen t horrify with t ales of lingerin g death on the g allows, of fault y electric chair s, or of agony i n the gas chambe r. Partly in res pon to such pr otests, veralstates such as N orth Carolina an d Texas switched to execution by lethal injectio n. The condemned person is put t o death painless ly, without rope s, voltage, bull ets, or gas. Did this answer the objections of d eath penalty opp onents? Of cours e not. On June 22, 1984, the New Y ork Times publ ished an editori al that sarcasti cally attacked t he new “hygienic” method of deat h by injection,and stated that“execution can n ever be made hum ane through scie nce.” So it’s no t the method tha t really trouble s opponents. It’s the death itse lf they consider barbaric.
原因1：死刑是“野蛮的”。有时候，绞刑架上凌迟的讲述、故障死刑电椅上的讲述、或在毒气室中临死挣扎的讲述使得死刑反对者更害怕。在一定程度上是为了响应这样的抗议，北卡罗莱纳州和得克萨斯
州等几个州改为注射毒针来执行死刑。判刑的人被无痛苦地杀死，没有绳索、电压、子弹或气体。这就回答了死刑反对者的异议了吗？当然没有。1984年6月22日，纽约时报发表了一篇社论，讽刺性地攻击了新的“卫生”的注射死亡方法，并指出“科学从来不能使死刑变得仁慈”。所以真正困扰反对者的不是方法，而是他们认为死亡本身是野蛮的。
Admittedly,capital punishm ent is not a ple asant topic. How ever, one does n ot have to likethe death penalt y in order to su pport it any mor e than one mustlike radical sur gery, radiation, or chemotherapy in order to fin d necessary thes e attempts at cu ring cancer. Ult imately, we maylearn how to cur e cancer with asimple pill. Unf ortunately, theday has not yetarrived. Today w e are faced with the choice of l etting the cance r spread or tryi ng to cure it wi th the methods a vailable, method s that one day w ill almost certa inly beconsidere d barbaric. Butto give up and d o nothing wouldbe far more barb aric and would c ertainly delay t he discovery ofan eventual cure. The analogy be tween cancer and murder is imper fect, becau mu rder is not the“dia” we are trying to cure.The dia isinjustice. We ma y not like the d eath penalty, bu t it must be ava ilable to punish crimes of cold-blooded murder,cas in which a ny other form of punishment woul d be inadequateand, therefore,
小键盘unjust. If we cr eate a society i n which injustic e is not tolerat ed, incidents of murder—the most flagr形容花美的句子
ant form o f injustice—will diminish.
诚然，死刑是不愉快的话题。然而，正如一个人不必喜欢根治性手术、放疗或化疗，以便找到治疗癌症的必要尝试；一个人也没必要为了支持死刑而喜欢死刑。最终，我们可能学会如何用简单的药丸治愈癌症。不幸的是，这一天还没有来到。现在，我们面临着选择让癌细胞扩散，还是选择试图用现有的方法治愈它。现有方法最终几乎肯定会被认为是野蛮的。但放弃，或什么也不做将更为野蛮，肯定会延迟最终治愈方法的发现。癌症和谋杀之间的比喻是不完美的，因为谋杀不是我们试图治愈的“疾病”。这种疾病是不公正。因此，我们可能不喜欢死刑，但必须用死刑来惩罚冷血杀手的谋杀，在这些案件中任何其他形式的惩罚是不够的和不公正的。如果我们构建一个不能容忍不公正的社会，谋杀这种最臭名远扬的不公正形式将会减少。
Reason 2. No other major dem ocracy us thedeath penalty. N o other major de mocracy—in fact, few other count ries of any desc ription—are plag ued by a murderrate such as tha t in the UnitedStates. Fewer an d fewer American s can remember t he days when unl ocked doors were the norm and mu rder was a rareand terrible off en. In America the murder rate climbed 122 per cent between 1963 and 1980. Duri ng the same peri od, the murder r ate in New Y orkincread by alm ost 400 percent, and the statist ics are even wor in many other cities. A study at MIT showed t hat bad on 1970 homicide rates a person who li ved in a large A merican city ran a greater riskof being
murdere d than an Americ an soldier in Wo rld War Two ranof being killedin combat. It is not surprisingthat the laws of each country di ffer according t o differing cond itions and tradi tions. If othercountries had ou r murder problem, the cry for ca pital punishment would be just a s loud as it ishere. And I dare say that any ot her major democr acy where 75 per cent of the peop le supported the death penalty w ould soon enactit into law.
原因2、没有其他主要的民主国家使用死刑。没有其他主要的民主国家，事实上是其他任何描述的国家，都没有美国的谋杀率高。越来越少的美国人记得不锁门是一种习惯，谋杀是一种罕见的、可怕的罪行的时代。1963年和1980年间，美国的谋杀率上升了122％。同一时期，纽约的谋杀率上升了近400％，其他许多城市的统计则更糟糕。麻省理工学院的一项研究表明，根据1970年谋杀率，一个住在美国大城市的人被谋杀的风险，要比在二战时美国士兵在战斗中被打死的风险大。依据不同的条件和传统，每个国家的法律也不同这并不奇怪。如果其他国家存在我们的谋杀问题，死刑的呼声会同样响亮。我敢说，有75％的人支持死刑的任何其他主要民主国家将会尽快将死刑写入法律。
美式打法
鲸鱼的种类Reason 3.An innocent pers on might be exec uted by mistake. Consider the wo rk of Hugo AdamBedau, one of th e most implacabl e foes of capita l punishment inthis country. Ac cording to Mr. B edau, it is “fal ntimentalit y to argue thatthe death penalt y should be abol ished becau of the abstract po ssibility that a n innocent perso nmight be execut ed.” He cites astudy of the v e
少年强则n thousand exec utions in this c ountry from 1892 to 1971, and co ncludes that the record fails to show that suchcas occur. The main point, how ever, is this. I f government fun ctioned only whe n the possibilit y of error didn’t exist, governm ent wouldn’t fun ction at all. Hu man life derve s special protec tion, and one of the best ways t o guarantee that protection is t o
assure that co nvicted murderer s do not kill ag ain. Only the de ath penalty canaccomplish thisend. In a recent ca in New Jer y, a man named Richard Biegenw ald was freed fr om prison afterrving eighteen years for murde r; since his rel ea he has been convicted of co mmitting four mu rders. A prisone r named Lemuel S mith, who, while rving four li fe ntences for murder (plus tw o life ntences for kidnappingand robbery) inNew Y ork’s Green Haven Prison, l ured a woman cor rections officer into the chapla in’s office andstrangled her. H e then mutilated and dismembered her body. An ad ditional life se ntence for Smith is meaningless.Becau New Y or k has no death p enalty statute,Smith has effect ively been given a licen to ki ll.
原因3、一个无辜的人可能会被错误地处死。考虑雨果.亚当.贝多的著作，他是美国最坚决的死刑反对者之一。根据贝多先生的观点，因可能误杀无辜这种抽象的可能性而废除死刑的主张是虚假的感情用事。他引用了一项关于1892年到1971年间美国的7000例执行死刑的研究，并得出该项研究并不能表明这些案例的发生。然而，主要的一点正是如此。如果政府只在不存在错误可能性的时候发挥作用时，
那么政府将不会发挥任何作用。人的生命值得特别保护，而保证这种保护的最佳方式之一是保证杀人犯不再杀人。只有死刑可以做到这一点。最近在新泽西州的一个案件中，一个名叫Ri chard Biegenwald的男子因谋杀而服刑十八年后被释放；自从被释放，他已经又被控诉犯了四起谋杀罪。一个名为莱缪尔.史密斯的囚犯，因谋杀罪被判四次终身监禁（加上因和抢劫被判处的两次终身监禁），在纽约的绿岛监狱服刑期间，将一名女劳教官诱骗到牧师办公室，将其扼死，并肢解了她的尸体。再加上一个终身监禁对史密斯来说已经没有意义。因为纽约没有死刑法规，实际上已经给了史密斯一个杀人执照。
But the prob lem of multiplemurder is not co nfined to the na tion’s penitenti aries. In 1981,ninety-one polic e officers werekilled in the li ne of duty in th is country. Seve n percent of tho arrested in t he cas that ha ve been solved h ad a previous ar rest for murder.In New Y ork Cit y in 1976 and 1977, eighty-fivepersons arrested for homicide. S ix of the indi viduals had twoprevious arrests for murder, and one had four pr evious murder ar rests. During th e two years theNew Y ork policewere arresting f or murder person s with a previou s arrest for mur der on the avera ge of one everyeight and a half days. This is n ot surprising wh en we learn that in 1975, for ex ample, the media n time rved in Massachutts f or homicide wasless than two an d a half years.In 1976 a studysponsored by the Twentieth Centu ry Fund found th at the average t ime rved in th e United Statesfor first-degree murder is ten y ears. The median time rved may be considerably lower.
但多重谋杀的问题并不仅仅局限于国家监狱。1981年，在美国有91名警察在执行任务的时候被杀害。在已经破获的案件中，7%的被捕者之前都曾因谋杀而被逮捕过。在纽约，1976年和1977年有85人因涉嫌杀人被捕，其中,6个人之前曾因谋杀罪被逮捕过两次，其中1名之前曾因谋杀罪被逮捕过四次。在这两年纽约警察逮捕的杀人犯中，平均每八天半就会有一个杀人犯之前曾因谋杀而被逮过。当我们了解这个事实：例如，1975年，马萨诸塞州杀人犯的平均服刑时间不足两年半；就不会感到奇怪。1976年，由二十世纪基金赞助的一项研究发现，美国一级谋杀罪的平均服刑时间是十年。平均服刑时间可能会更低。
Reason 4. Capital punishm ent cheapens the value of humanlife. On the con trary, it can be easily demonstr ated that the de ath penalty stre ngthens the valu e of human life. If the penaltyfor rape were lo wered, clearly i t would signal a lesned regard for the victim’s suffering, hum iliation, and pe rsonal integrity. It would cheap en their horribl e experience, an d expo them to an incread da nger of recurren ce. When we lowe r the penalty fo r murder, it sig nals a lesnedregard for the v alue of the vict im’s life. Somecritics of capit al punishment, s uch as columnist Jimmy Breslin,have suggested t hat a life nte nce is actuallya harsher penalt y for murder tha n death. This is sophistic nonse n. A few kille rs may decide no t to appeal a de ath ntence, bu t the overwhelmi ng majority make every effort to stay alive. Itis by exacting t he highest penal ty for the takin g of human
lifethat we affirm t he highest value of human life.原因4、死刑贬低人的生命价值。相反，可以很容易地证明，死刑提高了人的生命价值。如果强奸罪的刑罚降低，那显然标志着对受害者痛苦、屈辱和个人诚信方面的关注降低。这些受害者的痛苦经历就会失去价值，她们就会再次处于受到伤害的危险中。当我们降低谋杀罪的刑罚，这就标志着对受害者生命夹着的关注降低。一些死刑的批评家，如专栏作家吉米.布雷斯林，认为判处杀人犯终身监禁其实是一种比死亡更严厉的刑罚。这是诡辩的无稽之谈。一些杀人犯可能不会提出死刑上诉，但绝大多数人会尽一切努力维持生命。我们正是使用剥夺人生命的最高刑罚，来肯定人类生命的最高价值。skating
.Reas on 5. The deathpenalty is appli ed in a discrimi natory manner. T his factor no lo nger ems to be problem it once was. The appeal s process for acondemned prison er is lengthy an d painstaking. E very effort is m ade to e thatthe verdict andntence were fa irly arrived at.However, asrt ions of discrimi nation are not a n argument for e nding the deathpenalty but forextending it. It is not justiceto exclude every one from the pen alty of the lawif a few are fou nd to be so favo red. Justice req uires that the l aw be applied eq ually to all.
原因5、死刑是一种歧视方式。这一因素似乎不再和曾经一样是个问题了。一个死囚的上诉过程是漫长而艰苦的，尽一切努力确定作出的判决和刑罚公正地相符。然而，歧视的断言不是结束死刑的理由，而是延长死刑的理由。如果发现一些人受此优待而使每个人都免除法律惩罚是不公正的。正义要
求法律平等地适用于所有人。
.Reason 6. ThouShlat Not Kill.Opponents of the death penalty f requently cite t he sixth of theTen Commandments in an attempt t o prove that cap ital punishmentis divinely pros cribed. In the o riginal Hebrew,however, the Six th Commandment r eads “Thou Shalt Not Commit Murd er,” and the Tor al specifies cap ital punishmentfor a variety of offens. The b iblical viewpoin t has been uphel d by philosopher throughout hist ory. The greates t thinkers of th e nineteenth cen tury—Kant, Locke, Hobbes, Rousse au, Montesquieu,and Mill—agreed that natural la w properly autho rizes the sovere ign to take life in order to vin dicate justice.Only Jeremy Bent ham was ambivale nt. Washington,Jefferson, and F ranklin endord it. Abraham Lin coln authorizedexecutions for d erters in wart ime. Alexsis deTocqueville, who expresd profo und respect forAmerican institu tions, believedthat the death p enalty was indis pensable to thesupport of socia l order. The Uni tedStates Consti tution, widely a dmired as one of the minal ach ievements in the history of
