Death on a Greyhound

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/08/2008 (6446 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Vincent Weiguang Li stood in a Portage la Prairie courtroom Tuesday and asked for death.

If Li was found guilty of the crime he stands accused of in his native China, or in many parts of the United States, he could expect that his request to “kill me now” would be fulfilled. While there is no chance of that happening in Canada, where no convicted criminal has been executed in nearly a half-century, there are many among us who view the gruesome slaying of Tim McLean Jr. on a Greyhound bus as a perfect reason to bring back the death penalty.

On the websites of news organizations covering this sensational crime, there are dozens of comments from Canadians calling for a reintroduction of capital punishment. On the social networking site Facebook, more than 7,000 people have joined a group calling for execution as a result of this incident, with some very macabre individuals discussing in vivid detail which method should be used. To date, no politician has suggested that Canada dust off the noose, but the long-dormant national debate over the death penalty is quickly rekindling and is sure to re-ignite.

Any killing, especially one as bloodcurdling as the one those Greyhound passengers witnessed July 30, will prompt calls for equal and swift retribution. But killing McLean’s killer does nothing to bring that young man back, nor will it truly satisfy the desire for vengeance. What’s more, it would lead us back down a slippery slope Canada chose to step back from in 1976, when MPs revoked the state’s ability to arbitrarily snuff out human life.

Canada has not executed a prisoner since 1962, when convicted murderers Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas were hanged in Toronto’s Don Jail.

Since then, at least nine people convicted of first-degree murder – including Manitobans David Milgaard, Thomas Sophonow and James Driskell – were found not guilty of those crimes. Yet for every example which proves that re-introducing the death penalty increases the chances of the state killing an innocent person, there are cases which so sicken and horrify people that reinstating capital punishment becomes worthy of consideration.

In the mid-1980s, a string of brutal murders committed by killers such as Clifford Olson led Parliament to re-evaluate its stance on capital punishment. In 1987, MPs defeated a bill to reinstate capital punishment, thus ending any serious effort to bring back the death penalty. Yet the desire of some to execute has never fully dissipated: as recently as four years ago, a Gallup poll showed that 47 per cent of Canadians were in favour of state-sanctioned executions while 48 per cent opposed them.

Many will say that when someone like McLean dies in such a random and sickening manner, the killer no longer deserves to live. But even if Li is found guilty of murder beyond all doubt, it would not justify bringing back the death penalty.

Capital punishment is not a strong deterrent in the first place – the overall murder rate, along with the overall crime rate, continued to fall after Canada revoked the death penalty. The threat of the noose, the electric chair or lethal injection does not seem to weigh heavily on the minds of those who might kill.

Once we embrace capital punishment simply to whet our appetite for vengeance, it will become easier and easier for the state to justify killing someone for less clear-cut reasons. It did not take long after the Supreme Court lifted the U.S. ban on capital punishment for states like Texas to execute young offenders and people with mental disabilities. Once it is deemed OK to kill those who commit serious crimes, it is far harder to stuff the genie back into the bottle when those who may be innocent or cannot be held criminally responsible for their deeds face murder charges.

Unfortunately, Canada has already regressed somewhat on this important moral issue within the past year. Last fall, the Conservative government announced it would not seek clemency for Ronald Allan Smith, a convicted murderer from Alberta who sits on death row in Montana and withdrew its support for a United Nations resolution against capital punishment. This shameful decision, a reversal of Canada’s long-standing efforts to abolish capital punishment and extradite citizens on death row elsewhere, will hopefully not be an omen of things to come at home.

In the words of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, a society that embraces capital punishment treats criminals “according to the laws of war and victory celebrations — brutally, without consideration.” If we have reached the point where we simply demand an eye for an eye, we become equally as bloodthirsty and equally as terrible as those who kill in the first place.

ctbrown7@yahoo.ca