It's Not Execution, It's Murder

What to call it?

The ongoing saga of Islamic terrorism and its actions -- and victims -- practically screams for an honest characterization of its actions and the responses to it.  So here is my appeal to the national and international networks.

Please clean up your words.

When a person dies at the hands of another, the circumstances, not the media, dictate the appropriate word for what happens.  Sometimes it is an accident; sometimes it is intentional  Sometimes it is to make a point; sometimes it is retribution.  Sometimes when it is retribution, it is just -- and sometimes it is not.

There are actually words for those instances, and the media need to start using them properly.  The two that the media actually need to use most properly are "execution" and "murder."  Hint: they're not the same thing.

The media apparently have conflated "execution" and "execution-style" into one all-purpose term and, in the process, fogged up the appropriate meaning.  So let us start by getting all the terms right:

Murder is the intentional killing of an innocent who is intended to be killed by the murderer, despite the innocent having not been convicted of a crime.  The keys are that it is extra-judicial, and that no capital crime was committed by the innocent.

Execution is the organized, official judicial punishment meted out to the perpetrator of a capital crime in accordance with some standard quid pro quo guideline after something resembling due process.

Execution-style refers to the carrying out of the taking of a life in the manner of an execution, though without judicial process of any kind -- think St. Valentine's Day massacre, done like a firing squad, as an example.

The media unfortunately have continued to use the term "execution" so haphazardly as not to realize that when they use it incorrectly, they grant the presumption of due process to cold-blooded murderers.  That is my objection, and it is sufficient to drive the need for this column -- I do not want to see terrorists granted the imprimatur of some kind of justice, when they commit cold murder.

So let us apply terms appropriately, and stop captions like this one.  The Jordanian pilot burned by ISIS terrorists was not "executed", he was a prisoner and was murdered.  The people, including the policeman, killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack were not "executed", they were innocent of capital crimes; they were not convicted in any judicial environment -- they were murdered.

The two Iraqis killed by the Jordanians in response to the burning of the Jordanian pilot had been convicted of crimes in court -- they were actually "executed" in the proper meaning of the word.

Let us please start calling murder by its proper name, and reserve the term "execution" for the carrying out of a judicial process.  That includes murders here in the USA and overseas.

ISIS has no standing to execute anyone; they are murderers and their killings need to have the proper label.  They may be performed "execution-style", but they certainly are not executions.

One hopes the media will start executing this change immediately.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton