public executions: Barbaric? or are they?
Riding the elevator to my office this morning, I saw the news report that there had been another mass shooting, this time in Chicago. When I checked with CNN, I saw that no one was in custody as yet, but the article referred to a relatively recent incident in Chicago that involved a young lady who was killed in Chicago, Hadiya Pendleton. She had participated in the Barak Obama inauguration ceremonies as a band majorette, only to find death at the hands of gang members who mistook her for someone else.
I shook my head, yet again, over the mindless and needless death of people in a country that is touted to be the greatest in the world. My thoughts turned back to the years I spent living in the Middle East, specifically in Saudi Arabia, during the early 1980s. Putting aside, for a moment, the understanding that that country has spawned some of the worst terrorists on the planet, I considered the experience of a significantly lower crime rate within the country itself. I looked up a simple statistic: their homicide rate is over four times lower per capita than ours. And there’s a reason why.
Time and again, I have watched and listened to the endless debates on the subject of capital punishment, how it sends the wrong message, that it doesn’t really work, how it’s not the hallmark of a civilized society. But, I have to say the arguments are conducted by people who have never really experienced capital punishment in a visceral way.
In 1982, in Riyadh, I was shopping in the main part of the city on a late Friday morning. A friend of mine, who had been in the Kingdom for some time, grabbed my arm and pointed to a police tow truck, moving cars out of the large open central square and policemen directing traffic away from the area. He told me it meant there was going to be some kind of public punishment. In the Muslim world, Friday is their day of worship, and most were in the Mosque at prayer until just before noon. As the masses let out, the Saudi police formed a large ring to one side of the square and people rushed to the surround them, eager to witness the events that were unfolding. I’m not a small guy, but I was jostled and pushed as I stood there, unable to avert my eyes from the public spectacle. Within minutes a van pulled up, just inside the ring of police, and two men dressed in thobes and gutras were led from the van one by one and forced to kneel. The red and white checkered gutras were pulled away, exposing the necks of the two criminals. A tall Saudi entered and, almost casually, walked up to the first man carrying a long sword. With what must have been a highly practiced move, he swung the blade down on the man’s neck stopping within an inch of completely severing his head. He performed the act on the second man. The mob witnessing the event had been driven to a frenzy, some pushing to get to the front to see, others vomiting and shoving their way to the rear. At first, I didn’t know what to feel, there was mostly numbness, the kind that freezes your brain until it’s ready to process something unbelievable. My first conscious thought was that I now understood why it was so safe to wander the streets of Riyadh with virtually no fear at any given hour. The lesson of the beheadings was unmistakable: commit a capital offense and this is what you get. No matter what, the image never completely leaves you, ever again.
It turned out that the two criminals were policemen who had shot and sodomized a man. The man lived, which led to the two being convicted of their heinous crimes. Some have told me that what I witnessed was wildly barbaric and the reason that capital punishment, especially those conducted in a public forum, have been discontinued in the United States. I’ve wrestled with this question over the years. Their system of justice has certainly resulted in lower homicide rates (guns are illegal there, too, which also helps). So which society is ultimately more barbaric, the one which delivers the unambiguous lesson of punishment, or the one which harbors its citizens, who commit crimes such as these, in prisons for years, or even decades (at our expense) with no significant deterrent to others who continue such brutal lawlessness in their wake? I’m not so sure how to answer that question any more.
I shook my head, yet again, over the mindless and needless death of people in a country that is touted to be the greatest in the world. My thoughts turned back to the years I spent living in the Middle East, specifically in Saudi Arabia, during the early 1980s. Putting aside, for a moment, the understanding that that country has spawned some of the worst terrorists on the planet, I considered the experience of a significantly lower crime rate within the country itself. I looked up a simple statistic: their homicide rate is over four times lower per capita than ours. And there’s a reason why.
Time and again, I have watched and listened to the endless debates on the subject of capital punishment, how it sends the wrong message, that it doesn’t really work, how it’s not the hallmark of a civilized society. But, I have to say the arguments are conducted by people who have never really experienced capital punishment in a visceral way.
In 1982, in Riyadh, I was shopping in the main part of the city on a late Friday morning. A friend of mine, who had been in the Kingdom for some time, grabbed my arm and pointed to a police tow truck, moving cars out of the large open central square and policemen directing traffic away from the area. He told me it meant there was going to be some kind of public punishment. In the Muslim world, Friday is their day of worship, and most were in the Mosque at prayer until just before noon. As the masses let out, the Saudi police formed a large ring to one side of the square and people rushed to the surround them, eager to witness the events that were unfolding. I’m not a small guy, but I was jostled and pushed as I stood there, unable to avert my eyes from the public spectacle. Within minutes a van pulled up, just inside the ring of police, and two men dressed in thobes and gutras were led from the van one by one and forced to kneel. The red and white checkered gutras were pulled away, exposing the necks of the two criminals. A tall Saudi entered and, almost casually, walked up to the first man carrying a long sword. With what must have been a highly practiced move, he swung the blade down on the man’s neck stopping within an inch of completely severing his head. He performed the act on the second man. The mob witnessing the event had been driven to a frenzy, some pushing to get to the front to see, others vomiting and shoving their way to the rear. At first, I didn’t know what to feel, there was mostly numbness, the kind that freezes your brain until it’s ready to process something unbelievable. My first conscious thought was that I now understood why it was so safe to wander the streets of Riyadh with virtually no fear at any given hour. The lesson of the beheadings was unmistakable: commit a capital offense and this is what you get. No matter what, the image never completely leaves you, ever again.
It turned out that the two criminals were policemen who had shot and sodomized a man. The man lived, which led to the two being convicted of their heinous crimes. Some have told me that what I witnessed was wildly barbaric and the reason that capital punishment, especially those conducted in a public forum, have been discontinued in the United States. I’ve wrestled with this question over the years. Their system of justice has certainly resulted in lower homicide rates (guns are illegal there, too, which also helps). So which society is ultimately more barbaric, the one which delivers the unambiguous lesson of punishment, or the one which harbors its citizens, who commit crimes such as these, in prisons for years, or even decades (at our expense) with no significant deterrent to others who continue such brutal lawlessness in their wake? I’m not so sure how to answer that question any more.
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