An open letter to Gov. Chris Sununu: Once again New Hampshire is considering repeal of the death penalty. The repeal bill, Senate Bill 593, would replace capital punishment with imprisonment without the possibility parole.
There are many arguments from both sides of the aisle to consider regarding repeal of the death penalty. The arguments for repeal are from so many different perspectives: religious, moral, pragmatic, legal, financial, medical and psychiatric/psychological. I will offer the arguments here from a medical and psychiatric/psychological perspective.
Organized medicine (the American Medical Association) has opposed physicians participating in the process of administering the death penalty since July 1980. The reason for this prohibition of physicians participating in process of killing a prisoner is that it is a violation of Section 1 of the AMA’s Principles of Medical Ethics, which states that “a physician shall be dedicated to providing competent medical care, with compassion and respect for human rights.”
It is unfortunate that other, less-qualified medical personnel have been employed in the procedures of administering lethal injections, often inadequately and always inhumanely, in violation of these important ethical principles.
We are very fortunate that the N.H. Senate has passed SB 593 on a vote of 14-10 and the N.H. House has passed SB 593 by just shy of a two-thirds majority. SB 593 is headed for your desk, Gov. Sununu.
We are aware you have indicated your opposition to repealing the death penalty in New Hampshire. You have offered two reasons for your opposition to repeal of the death penalty. We certainly hope that you will reconsider and allow New Hampshire to join with all the other New England states and the 19 other states in the United States that have repealed the death penalty and ended their participation in the archaic and barbaric practice of state-supported killing.
You have previously expressed your interest in supporting crime victims and supporting the death penalty for the most heinous crimes. I think we can all agree that there is no more heinous crime than murder, yet we had more than 11,000 murders in the United States last year.
Would we as a society want to murder 11,000 more if we found their murderers and were able to prosecute them successfully? What about the mistakes, as there have been well over 150 exonerations already? Or are some murders really more “heinous” than others? With all due respect, and I mean this sincerely, is a school teacher’s death by murder, or a brother’s or sister’s death by murder, or a child’s death by murder, less heinous than a policeman’s death by murder?
As a psychiatrist I have been concerned about violence throughout my career. There is certainly too much violence in our world and in our country. As a society we need to focus on reducing violence, not condoning it. Violence of course comes in many forms, from bullying in our schools to sexual, physical and emotional abuse in our homes and workplaces, and of course murder in our homes and streets.
We certainly don’t punish bullies by bullying them, nor should we punish abusers by abusing them, nor should we punish murderers by murdering them. Elective murder by the state is not the best we can do as a civilized society. Indeed, it is a form itself of violence, state-supported violence. We can do better, and we should. It is not a good example to murder to show that murder is wrong.
Let me discuss healing, as healing from wounds is what we as physicians try our best to do in our practice of medicine. Psychiatrists focus of course on emotional wounds, which we know can be just as traumatic and long lasting as physical wounds, if not more so, likely more so. Emotional wounds can actually last a lifetime, if not even longer, as we have seen from stories of children of Holocaust survivors. Murder of a loved one is such a trauma, such a deep emotional wound, that healing is at best a long and tortuous road, requiring as much support and love a family and community can provide.
Do we honestly think that putting a convicted murderer to death by taking 10 to 20 or more years of trials and appeals helps the process of healing for victims (family members, colleagues and friends) of the crime of murder? Many years of publicity and personal appearances by family and others just perpetuates the pain and reopens the wounds of such a violent death of a loved one.
Administering the death penalty thus interferes with healing, with the emotional attempts at “closure” for the victims of murder, rather than “strengthening the laws for crime victims.” Many family members of victims of murder oppose the death penalty, but those who do not unfortunately prolong their own grief and suffering, and interfere with the ability to heal their grievous wounds.
In thinking about wounds related to the death penalty there is another important factor to consider, namely the emotional wounds inflicted on those individuals who are involved in the procedures and administration of the death penalty. As a member of the New Hampshire Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, I have heard and read about the effects on those individuals who participate in the process of administering the death penalty, the actual process of killing of those on death rows around the country. Wardens, prison workers, prosecutors and defense attorneys have experienced depression, anxiety and PTSD as a result of participating in the death penalty process.
Since we all know that killing is really reasonable only if we have no other choice to defend ourselves or others, do we want to continue to subject so many individuals and state workers to this “heinous” process of killing when life without parole is available as an alternative?
I have discussed above only some of the many sound and compelling reasons why the death penalty is unreasonable for our state and society to maintain. I am reminded often of the final lines of John Donne’s 17th century poem “No Man is an Island” as a potent argument for ending the death penalty: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I’m involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Once again I implore you, Gov. Sununu, to reconsider your opposition to repeal and approve SB 593 and allow New Hampshire to no longer “kill (convicted murderers) to show that killing is wrong.”
(Dr. Leonard Korn is president of the New Hampshire Medical Society.)