The Cynic Express(ed) 1.23: A Pound of Flesh

     This week, I am going to be lazy and let events speak for themselves. The first, a quote from the March 9, 1998 issue of Time, from an article on page 76, entitled "Body Parts for Sale":

      The scene is a quiet hotel room in midtown Manhattan on a sunny day in February.
      Two Chinese nationals are concluding a business deal in rapid-fire Mandarin.  But 
      this is no ordinary transaction.  The men are discussing straightforward proposition 
      to sell the kidneys, corneas, livers, and lungs of executed Chinese prisoners for 
      tens of thousands of dollars....

     Little did the Chinese nationals know that they were dealing with a former Chinese dissident and an FBI sting operation. And, it should be noted, all the tut-tuts that the newsmedia could muster in those space-filling stories.

     Now, to juxtapose, I will insert House Bill Number 1670, proposed by Missouri Legislator Chuck Graham:

      Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the state of Missouri, as follows:

     Section 1.1. The provision of this section may be known and cited as the "Life 
     for a Life Program". (sic)

     2. Any person sentenced to death may, not less than one year and not more than two 
        years after sentencing, request to be accepted into the program.

     3. In order to qualify, the person must:
      (1) Voluntarily give up all further right to appeal the conviction which resulted in
          the death sentence;

      (2) Agree to donate one kidney or bone marrow for transplant upon request; and

      (3) Pass a physical examination that proves the person is medically qualified to donate.

     4. The sentencing court shall hear the request to be accepted into the program.  After 
        hearing and upon determination that the person qualifies for the program, the court 
        may order the person to be accepted into the program.  The court shall consider any 
        victim's testimony before making its decision.

     5. Any person accepted into the program shall have the person's death sentence commuted
        to life in prison without possibility of parole.

     6. Any person accepted into the program shall provide such person's kidney or bone 
        marrow upon request.

     7. No person accepted into the program may further appeal the conviction which resulted
        in the death penalty.

     8. Primary consideration for the donations shall be given to recipients in Missouri.

     9. Any person on death row on the effective date of this section may request acceptance
        into the program within one year of the effective date of this section.  No such
        request shall be cause to delay any such person's execution.

     The above action is still in committee in the Missouri House of Representatives and the text of the bill was taken from its website.

     As a feeling, compassionate cynic, I can openly snort in disgust. What a grisly proposal!

     As anyone who has had Philosophy 105 at Marquette can tell you, there are two arguments for the death penalty. Retribution and deterrence. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life make mantras for the people in the retribution camp, yours truly included. It goes all the way back to Deuteronomy 19:21, wherein the Lord, speaking to Moses with a King James accent, said, "And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."

     That is just retribution. To call this the "Life for a life" program is to tell the survivors of the victims that their loved one was worth a kidney or a scraping of the insides of the perpetrator's bones. It actually twists the words of the lex talionis. A life for a life means a death for a death.

     My second concern is that a death sentence will become not a swift death sentence, but more of a sentence to an organ farm. After all, most will choose to peddle parts of their flesh to save their lives. It's not as clean as the way the Chinese did it, killing the prisoners and then selling the parts; our system would manipulate the prisoners into asking for it. I respect the clean efficiency demonstrated in selling the parts for money, the certain recognition that it was a cold thing to do; a certain lawmaker in central Missouri would barter good, honest, down-home Christian mercy for body parts for his constituents.

     Of course, proponents of the plan will point out that it is a free decision to be made by the prisoner. So was the pit or the pendulum. And this hare-brained scheme plan, to offer the most heinous of murderers life in a cell for giving up a literal pound of flesh, is at best merely macabre and at worst justice that can only be called Poetic, in the true spirit of Montressor and the House of Representative Ushers.