Isn’t it an irony
that the law would find someone guilty of a criminal offence, condemn
the person to death, and then make serious efforts to prevent the
person from committing suicide? This is how Richard Hughes captures the
irony in his novel, A High Wind in Jamaica:
“The night before
the execution, Jonsen managed to cut his throat: but they found out in
time to bandage him. He was unconscious by the morning, and had to be
carried to the gallows in a chair: indeed, he was finally hanged in it”
(p.278).
Even as one
condemned to death, Jonsen still does not have the right to kill
himself! The only right he has is to submit himself for execution at
death o’clock! And, of course, he has the right to refuse having a
priest pray for his soul before it is separated from his perishable
self. As a matter of fact, the Law does not want Jonsen to kill himself
so that it would have the pleasure of killing him, however minimal and
laughable that role is. That explains why he is bandaged up, and
possibly given some treatment, and then taken to the gallows.
The Law says the
condemned criminal does not deserve to live and has to be killed, but
would not allow that person to actualise that declaration of “does not
deserve to live.” The Law appears to want to have the pleasure of
carrying out that ritual of killing the criminal. If the criminal hangs
himself in prison, and attempts to cut his or her throat as in Jonsen’s
case, such a criminal has cheated the Law, or has prevented the Law
from experiencing the pleasure of exacting the capital punishment.
Are we are all not
already dead before the Law? The Law and only the Law can take life. No
one else can do so without permission from the Law.
The Law alone has the right to be wrong. No one can legally condemn the Law in the language of the Law.
This paradox is
worse when the Law is an individual and an individual is the Law. The
individual whose word is law deprives us of independent thought,
action, speech, and above all, life. Our lives are hidden in the life
of the individual that is the Law. Our lives, paradoxically, are not
ours.
The theatre of
legal execution wants its performance to be according to the script.
Subversion in which assigned roles are played by those not cast for
them cannot be allowed
In many cases,
effort is made to make sure that the condemned criminal is properly
fed, the impression being that the Law is protecting the criminal’s
right to life, or rather being in support of the criminal’s desire to
satisfy the most basic of what Abraham Maslow referred to as the
“Hierarchy of Human Needs.”
Interestingly,
after posturing as defending the criminal’s right to pursue a
satisfaction of physiological needs, the Law would devour the body of
the criminal. For skeptics like me, the Law seems to be playing the
hypocrite in such a case. Perhaps it is part of the performance of the
mega script for which many have often come to refer to the Law as an
“ass.”
In some ancient
perspectives, feeding the condemned criminal is both a spiritual and
moral obligation. The spirit world, it is argued, has its own laws
concerning the respect that every soul deserves and would surely exact
its judgment on anyone or any system that violates the right of a soul
to fair treatment. In other words, a criminal that receives unfair
treatment before execution has a case against the executioner at the
“court” in the spirit world.
But with regard to
the exercise of the right to execute the criminal, one cannot help but
understand the Law as not being willing to miss the cathartic pleasure.
For some people who believe in the absolute right of the Law to deal
with the criminal as it likes, such exercise of the pleasure to
preserve and later execute the criminal is one way of signifying how
the commission of crimes leads to the tragedy of losing one’s rights
and integrity.
Ideally, the Law is
about justice, is indeed justice, which is why it has taken the role of
determining who is given what punishment or reward for which act. The
Law wants to make sure that punishment by death is a lasting ritual.
Not that one is
opposed to execution ordered by the Law. One is rather amused at how
the Law desperately tries to prevent the condemned person from
participating in the termination of his or her life, other than just
submitting the self for the show. The Law does not want any deprivation
of its right to take life on behalf of its Maker.
Legal execution may
be justified as equitable punishment for offence, but they are also a
drama of the absurd in which the Law may choose to be ridiculous in
enforcing its right to kill.
