When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition. By Austin Sarat. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. 314p. $29.95.

Abstract

As the United States begins fighting a war devoted not to the overthrow or liberation of a particular government but, rather, as Mr. Bush put it, to rid the world of “evildoers,” it is easy to forget that our state is also busy at home killing people in the service of a similar oversimplified moralism. Austin Sarat's most recent book is, then, an important reminder. Since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976 the country's appetite for it has steadily increased: More than 3,600 people now sit on death row, and their numbers continue to swell. While there have been some welcome signs of a slackening in the nation's tolerance for the killing of the mentally retarded and the innocent, the Rehnquist court has been streamlining the appeal process in an attempt, in the Chief Justice's words, to “get on with it.” Sarat rightly protests against the ensuing compromises of the rights of those caught up in the system, a disproportionate number of whom are, as everyone knows, poor and black. He argues that routine killing by the state is not just illiberal in its corrosive effect upon the Bill of Rights but in conflict with the institutions and spirit of our democracy. Where democracy calls for a willingness to seek reconciliation and the improvement of institutions through dialogue, and hence a willingness to admit that one's own perspective is limited and one's own judgment fallible, capital punishment requires that we assume the mantle of infallibility, and it is sustained by a spirit of rage that it in turn nurtures. One of the strongest features of Sarat's book is its insistence that none of this is accidental: “State killing…is part of a strategy of governance that makes us fearful and dependent on the illusion of state protection, that divides rather than unites, that promises simple solutions to complex problems” (p. 247). It is easier and less anxiety-producing to tell ourselves familiar comic book stories about the battle of good and evil than to get down to “the difficult, often frustrating work of understanding what in our society breeds such heinous acts of violence” (p. 14). And if we believe the stories we tell, it is hard to imagine living without the protection of a powerful and threatening state that can match the violent forces arrayed against us. For those who profit politically or financially from the present forms of that society, that is all to the better. Protego ergo obligo.