Killing Tyrants

Is it possible to oppose the death penalty and still be in favor of killing tyrants? That is, I think, my own position, but the botched execution of Saddam Hussein, which looked more like savage revenge than impartial justice, made it much harder to hold on to both those views. Still, they seem to me contradictory but not incompatible. I don’t believe that the state should kill people convicted of crimes against other people, even of terrible crimes. Except when it is resisting military attack or helping others who are under attack, the state should not be in the killing business; its first commitment is to the preservation of life. But a tyrant has committed crimes not simply against individuals but against the solidarity of the citizens, against the commonwealth, against the very idea of a political community. And that seems to raise the stakes; a tyrant is not an ordinary criminal.

Assassinating a tyrant poses no moral problems. Here is a ruler fully empowered and actively engaged, right now, in the oppression of his subjects: his prisons are crowded, his torturers are at work, his death squads roam the country, his tax collectors are extortionate. He is at war with his subjects—actually, not metaphorically—and killing him is a legitimate act of war. Tyrannicide is an honorable killing, and the killers are commonly honored. But now imagine the same tyrant overthrown: he is a prisoner of war; he cannot simply be killed. Shouldn’t he be brought to trial for his crimes and, if convicted, punished in a just and humane way? He is powerless now, locked up, in prison garb—why should we treat him differently than we believe all prisoners should be treated?

I first wrote about this question with regard to kings like Charles I and Louis XVI, overthrown in the course of a revolution and then brought to trial by their revolutionary opponents. In France, the Jacobins wanted to kill Louis without a trial on the grounds that he was not a French citizen but rather “an enemy of the people,” who continued to be a threat to the people even from his prison. The leaders of the Gironde, whom we might think of as the center-left of the French Revolution, insisted that Louis was “citoyen Louis Capet,” charged with the crimes of tyranny and treason, who should be brought to trial like any other accused criminal and, if convicted of treason, executed like any other traitor. The death penalty already existed, and since the point of the trial, in Girondin eyes, was to prove that Louis was indeed a citizen, in no way above the other citizens, it made no sense to exempt him from the penalty. Louis claimed to rule by divine right; he would be brought before a human court. He claimed to be legally inviolable; he would be judged by his peers. He claimed to be physically untouchable; he would be killed by the state executioner.

Tom Pain...