The Death of Socrates. Oil on canvas painting of the execution of Socrates, sentenced to die by drinking poison Hemlock. In the painting, an elderly Socrates is dressed in a white robe and sits upright on a bed, one hand extended over a cup, the other gesturing in the air; he is still teaching. He is surrounded by his friends of varying ages, most showing emotional distress, unlike Socrates, who remains calm. The young man handing him the cup looks the other way, with his face in his free hand. Crito listens intently to his teacher's words while clutching his knee. An elderly man, Plato, sits at the end of the bed, slumped over and looking in his lap. To the left, other men are seen through an arch set in the background wall. On the stairway in the background, Socrates' wife Xanthippe, who had been dismissed earlier by her husband, takes a wistful glance backward at the scene.

Hopefully (and probably), I will not be murdered. But if I am, I want to make this clear: I do not want the person who killed me to be executed. Please do not execute my killer.

As I write this, the Pentagon plans to livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan. This horrific display of violence is typical of the Trump administration and of Pete Hegseth's so-called Department of War. Recently, Christa Pike, a woman who was set to be executed by the State of Tennessee (where I live), was hospitalized following a failed attempt to execute her by lethal injection that left her in great pain and put her into a coma from which she recently regained consciousness. These things are weighing on my mind as I think about the death penalty.

There are many reasons to be opposed to capital punishment, and I won't spend a lot of time going over them now. It hasn't been shown to be an effective deterrent to murder; it's more expensive to carry out than life imprisonment; there's little evidence it provides meaningful relief to victims' families; and worst of all, it risks killing innocent people who have been wrongfully convicted. These are all good reasons to be opposed to the death penalty, and they factor in to my opposition, but the main reason I am opposed to executions is that we do not need to do them. We do not need the state to kill people. And I do not need the state to kill someone who killed me.

I am against unnecessary killing. I believe in the old slogan that meat is murder; that's why I'm vegan. I'm as aghast as anyone is at murders. Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people and injured dozens more. Christa Pike, at the age of 18, tortured and killed Colleen Slemmer, who was 19, in 1995.1 These are grievous acts and justice demands that society punish them. But we do not have to respond to these murders by taking more lives. We are capable of separating dangerous people from society at large, and deterring criminals as much as it's possible to do so, without killing anyone.

People may say that murderers “deserve” to die. I have written against the concept of moral desert in the past, and I may do so again on this blog someday, but I will just say this: as far as I'm concerned, what the killer deserves doesn't enter into it. If someone kills me, they may very well deserve to die, but their death won't do anything to make the world a better place. But perhaps Tolkien, through the mouth of Gandalf, put it best:

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.

Life is a precious thing. I am rather attached to mine. If some day I am murdered, I hope my killer is brought to justice, by which I mean I hope they receive a sentence of life in prison. And I hope that person manages to find some meaning in their life afterwards. But what I do not want is for that person to be put to death. Indeed, if my killer is sentenced to death, I want it to be known that this was done against my wishes, and I would hope that my family would make it clear that I was against the death penalty and would not have wanted it even for my own killer.

I don't see this as a request for lenience. By all means, if I'm murdered, sentence the killer to life without parole. Hell, if some jackass accidentally hits me with their car because they were looking at their phone while driving,2 it's my sincere wish that they get locked up for the rest of their life and never get to sit behind the wheel of a motor vehicle ever again. I like being alive! I have a family who love me, and I don't think it's even that arrogant to presume that they'd be pretty devastated to lose me. If you're reading this after someone killed me, please know that I'm not asking you to like that person or to want them to be happy or free. I am only asking that they not be sentenced to death.

So, I'll say it one more time now, with hope that this piece I'm writing never becomes genuinely relevant to someone's life, but also with the express intent that it be taken as the expression of my sincere wish about the fate of the person who took my life: please do not execute my killer. I do not want my death to be the reason for someone else's life to be ended.

Featured image is The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David, 1787.