collective of the eight largest, “civilized” and most economically powerful countries in the world (Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan and the US), the United States and Japan are the only countries that still practice the death penalty. And to their credit, Japan does not have a policy of executing children as we practice in the United States. How can anyone say that the lawful killing of a child is consistent with human dignity or justice? But van den Haag insists that the threat of execution is enough of a deterrent to warrant its use. But let us be honest. How plausible is it to execute children? Because crimes of passion are not capable of receiving the death penalty, we must assume that those who commit homicide have the ability to comprehend and take responsibility for their actions. We cannot vote in this country until we are 18; one can assume that this is a generally accepted age of responsibility. So how can we expect a child who commits a murder to have a full understanding of his actions? Some of our congressmen and senators have proposed lowering the age of execution to 13, despite the fact that basic human rights declarations consider the execution of anyone under the age of 18 to be a gross violation of natural and understood rights standards. Van den Haag also claims that the imposition of the death penalty maintains the dignity of a society because it creates security, vindication of the law, and “retribution on those who horribly violate it” (208). But the case is rather to the contrary. Society loses its dignity when the state takes revenge into its hands. The right to kill for retribution is not acceptable when it takes the form of state mandated murder: vindictive behavior that results in legally ending a life. If it is all right to kill those who kill, why then, as Professor Conrad reasons, “rapists cannot be raped; robbers cannot be robbed; burgla...
