Moua claims that murder is "the malicious, premeditated and unjustified taking of anther human life." It's actually the deliberate, willful and premeditated taking of another person's life, but I'll accept his definition. His understanding of justification is disingenuous. Execution is easily distinguishable from self-defense or killing in a just war. In a justified killing, a person kills because he is in imminent danger of death or serious harm himself.
If a person who was attacked by a mugger chases that mugger and shoots him, he will be convicted of some sort of unlawful killing because he was not justified in taking the mugger's life. Once he was robbed and the mugger had fled, the killer was not in danger. Nor are we justified to execute a murderer once he has been convicted and imprisoned.
Moua argued for the death penalty because people do not have an inalienable right to life. His belief is that rights are reciprocal only; they are a compact among people that exist only when people abide by them. I wonder if the editors at The Daily Tar Heel feel the same way about the freedoms of speech and press, or if they would understand when the day comes that the general public wants only pleasantries published.
In our country, we believe that all men are created with certain inalienable rights, that among these is the right to life. We have for 200 years committed ourselves to a government whose sole purpose for existing is to secure those rights. Thus, no one can be denied his right to life without due process of law.
Moua, who doesn't believe in innate inalienable rights, does believe that murdering murderers is innately just and that there is a difference between the state murdering the murderer and the murderer having murdered somebody. Moua sees two people and values their lives differently. I agree that people should be treated according to their actions, but only to a point. Every person's life has the same innate, unchanging and priceless value. Just as the value of a person's life does not depreciate over time, a murderer does not cash in the value of his life by killing.
It is not preposterous to equate the state murdering murderers with murderers murdering other people. The deliberation, willfulness and premeditation is the same. The malice is the same. The lack of danger and, therefore, justification is the same, and the values of the lives lost is the same.
More murder does not bring justice to the victim's family. Instead, we tell the victim's family to hope that another human being will be poisoned to death. That's sadism. If we truly are concerned with somehow repairing the victim's family, then we need to stop pretending that a murder will heal their pain and instead put murderers in the abyss of Central Prison for the remainder of their natural lives.
Patrick Frye is a senior political science major. Reach him at pcfrye@email.unc.edu.
