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Many years ago Mom, Dad and I were up in Iowa Falls attending to some work on the farm. On the drive back to Mount Vernon — about 125 miles/200 kilometers — Dad and I were in one vehicle, Mom in another. Something had been bothering him for a few days: I knew it was a capital case, but I didn’t know more than that.

So I asked him, of course. He didn’t tell me — he was always famously tightlipped about cases, even with family — but instead asked me what I thought of capital punishment.

I said something like, “Well, I wish it wasn’t necessary.” Dad gave me withering silence in return. I knew what that silence meant. It meant if you’re not going to contribute any thought to the discussion then I guess we won’t be having one. So I fumbled out a position, kind of a split-the-difference try-to-have-it-both-ways thing, the way so many people try to have the death penalty. Dad still wasn’t impressed, but at least I was now trying to engage the question, so he indulged me a bit.

I remember quite well his first question: “Should the State have the right to kill one of its own citizens as punishment for a crime?” I remember quite well my first answer: “Yes. I’m with Socrates on that: I think the Apology says it all.”

I remember this, Dear Readers, because I remember how Dad’s withering silence was upgraded to a glare of are-you-really-my-son? Then he shook himself, looked back to the scenery passing by outside, and responded. “Rob, Socrates’ argument is based on the State having succored him, the State having supported him, the State having given him so much, that the State can do anything it wants to him including killing him. Socrates’ argument is an abomination. The American Experiment is dedicated to the idea the State is only authorized to do what we the people have ordained. You can’t reconcile the two. Socrates’ vision is for unlimited government power over the lives of its citizens, and the American vision is for a limited government of sharply enumerated powers. You can be a Socratic or you can be an American. You can’t be both.”

I can’t promise he said those words exactly — but it was close. You catch the gist at any rate. Beneath it was a subtext of you’re still refusing to engage — you thought you’d let a reference to Socrates do your hard work for you — it doesn’t work that way.

About another mile went by us before I spoke again. “Then does the State have that authority? I don’t know, since you curbstomped Socrates.”

Dad caught the reference. Not because he’s big into pop culture, but because he’s seen the crime scene photographs. “The State unquestionably has the authority, Rob. The Supreme Court has affirmed the Constitutionality of capital punishment, at least in theory, too many times to count. But should it?”

I thought for a while more and told him the truth: “I don’t know.”

He gave that flavor of silence I’ve come to know as not good enough. He finally said something like, “Don’t you think this is something important enough that every voter should have an opinion on it?”, followed with a silence of of course it’s that important now step up to the plate.

So, being a dutiful son, I refused. I asked him again what was weighing on his mind. He sighed (you disappoint me) and silence ruled for a little bit.

He then told me about an appeal he was currently hearing. The particulars were brutal: two people conspired to murder a witness in a drug trial, but they botched the job and killed the witness when his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s two toddlers were in the house. The girlfriend was shot in the back of the head in front of her toddlers, and each toddler then took a slug in the back of the head. Those were the facts. They were not in dispute. (Even the defendants stipulated to this: at trial they put the blame on each other, claiming to have just been along as a passive accomplice.) They raised questions as to the fairness of their trial, which is where Dad came into the picture.

“So. Does the State have the right to kill these two? Yes. Should the State have the right to kill these two? What do you think?”

I suddenly felt very tired. When Dad briefed me on the facts of the case, he didn’t give the sterile, sanitized version that I did here. He told me the victims’ names — what they did in their lives up to their deaths — the gruesome facts of autopsy — the possibility the mother was still alive but paralyzed and bleeding to death as her children were executed — it all made me sick to my stomach. This was part of his plan. There’s a difference between the real world and the dry formalities of debate. If the State should have the right to kill these two, then the State should have the right to impose the death penalty.

So it came down to this question: should the State execute these two child-killers?

I wrestled with it some more. “Yes,” I finally said. “Yes. Yes.”

“Why?” It was never enough for Dad that I have a good answer: I had to have good, sound reasoning. He’d much sooner forgive someone who came to a bad answer by good reasoning than the reverse.

“Because these two… they were acting completely casual and normal, they stalked, they gave no clue about their intentions, and then they up and executed an entire family. If I saw them on the street and knew what they did, I’d kill them myself. Just having them out in public is a clear and present threat to the community. We’re allowed to kill in self-defense: why shouldn’t the State be allowed to kill in defense of the community?”

A faint smile quirked up at the corner of Dad’s mouth. It didn’t last long. Still, I recognized it as a ah, you finally showed up to the skirmish: excellent. “But we’re not talking about lethal self-defense, Rob. A police officer is allowed to kill in defense of the community — that’s settled law. But we’re not talking about defense: we’re talking about punishment. Those two are in prison and they’re going to leave in body bags. The State has the right to hasten their exit: should this right ever be exercised?”

I ground my teeth for a bit. “You know, most people who oppose it say the State doesn’t, shouldn’t, have the right to kill people—”

“They’re idiots. Well-meaning idiots. It does have the right, should have the right. It’s how we use our rights that reveals our character — as individuals and as a nation. Answer the question: should this right be exercised?”

After what seemed like five years, I finally growled out a “Yes.” To forestall Dad’s next question I continued with, “Because it offends my moral sentiments that these two should keep breathing.”

He smiled and said nothing. He just sat there and smiled, smiled, smiled.

“You approve?” I was stunned. I really was. “There’s not much rigor behind that.”

“Of course there’s not,” he told me, still smiling. “Rob, prevention and rehabilitation are the rational, thinking-brain reactions to crime. Punishment is a visceral reaction. The urge to punish isn’t rational, isn’t supposed to be rational. We’re supposed to keep that urge within limits defined by our reason, but the urge itself is entirely visceral. You support capital punishment because you want those two to burn in hell. Well-done. I can accept that. Good reasoning. Better than most people use.”

“But it’s still inadequate.”

“I didn’t say that. But if you feel it’s inadequate, well — we’ve got a hundred miles to home. Plenty of time to fix up your reasoning.”

I ground my teeth again. Dad was being, well, Dad: studiously avoiding taking any particular side on the debate, but making sure I knew that any position I took was simply not good enough, not reasoned enough, to be worthy of his respect. He said he could accept my decision — not that he would respect it. Still, the silences he was now giving me were of the take your time to think, it’s okay sort, not the withering things I’d been receiving earlier.

“If we let the State kill, sooner or later that power will be abused by the State,” I finally said.

Dad hemmed and hawed. “If we let the State outlaw murder, sooner or later the power to outlaw murder will be abused by the State. Is that really a reason to forbid the State from outlawing murder?”

That line of thought perished, having taken a brutal torpedo below the waterline. I winced. I’d set up what I thought was a good, principled argument, and he knocked it down as if it was a toy soldier.

“Death is permanent. Life sentences can be overturned if it turns out there was an error.”

“Errors which are overwhelmingly shown not to take place. If you get convicted of murder-one, you go into the hole for life and there’s no Innocence Project that’s willing to do a reinvestigation of your case. Wrongful execution is a horrific thing and we grant the condemned multiple appeals and free legal counsel throughout the entire appellate process — we don’t do that for life imprisonment without parole. Which is worse? The possibility of executing someone wrongly, or the possibility of putting someone in the hole for fifty years and letting Father Time do our killing for us?”

I grimaced. I grimaced lots. “The injustice of wrongful life imprisonment can’t seriously be used as an argument for the justness of execution. One wrong does not excuse another.”

Dad had a fey, mirthful grin on his face. “Touché. Point well-scored. Go on.”

It took me almost until Waterloo to put my thoughts in order. Dad didn’t say a word: he knew I was thinking, he didn’t want to intrude. Finally — “Without exception, all powers we permit the State to exercise are sooner or later abused by the State. Therefore it is in our best interests to allow the State to only exercise the minimum level of power necessary to achieve its lawful ends.”

He nodded. “Very minimal-government of you.” He didn’t offer any other commentary, though, except a where are you going with this?

“So what’s the purpose of justice? Is it to protect the citizens, or is it to satisfy the citizenry’s visceral need for vengeance?”

“Both,” he responded immediately, and grimly. “That’s the central conflict in justice, I think — what our aim ought be.”

“Because if our aim is to protect the People, there is no possible justification for permitting the State to execute offenders: lesser means work as well, and for that reason must be preferred over drastic measures. But if our aim is to satisfy the need for vengeance, then — then I want those two burning in hell.”

Dad gave a grave nod. “So the question about whether the State should ever execute someone is really a question about the nature of justice, and not about the death penalty itself?”

I sat there and thought furiously for a while. “Yes. Yes. Once you can answer what the nature of justice is, the rest follows logically from it.”

Dad nodded to this. “And what’s the nature of justice?”

I grimaced. “I don’t see much difference between this ‘urge for blood’ you’re talking about and a plain old-fashioned lynching. So I guess I’m with the protecting the citizenry.”

“You guess?” Unspoken: we’ve gone through all this and you’re going to chicken out now?

I sighed. “The purpose of justice is to protect the citizenry. The death penalty must be forbidden to the State.”

Dad nodded. He made some faint grunt which was the treasured, I can respect that. Trust me — no finer music exists to my ears.

“What do you think? What’s your answer?” I asked him.

He was quiet for a moment. “Those little kids, Rob — if it was you who was shot in the back of the head and left for dead like that, if it was you who died — there’s no possible way the shooter would be left to walk this earth. It would not happen. Any and all claims that ‘justice’ demands the shooter be left breathing are abominations. He would and should die.”

I thought about this for a moment, nodded. It’s true: I don’t have kids. Maybe I’m just unable to understand on a visceral level just how deep the need for bloody vengeance goes. But — “You didn’t answer my question.”

Dad gave a wry touché smile. “You’re right. I didn’t. I can’t have a public opinion on that, Rob, so I won’t. But I will say this: it’s possible you’re a better man than I am.”

And that, Dear Readers, is how I came to my current position on the death penalty. The death penalty is Constitutional — but for the love of God, we must put it behind us.

But I’m not at all sure I’m right about that.