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IntellectualLoafing.com: The Death Penalty - A Balanced Debate. An even two-sided essay covering all the major issues including discrimination, deterrence, life without parole and the risk of executing the innocent. Concludes with a series of questions enabling readers to reach their own logical opinion.
Introduction
The advocation of the death penalty is not a simple question, despite its almost immediate dismissal by most modern liberal thinkers. During the generally supported air campaign’s over Baghdad during the Gulf War and Belgrade during the Kosovo conflict completely innocent people were killed. Although the deaths were unintentional they were inevitable; a necessary sacrifice. How is it therefore that many people are against the execution of criminals guilty of capital murder? Is it also a sacrifice? Is it also necessary?
If we are to advocate the death penalty we have to prove three things. That it is morally correct, that there is a valid amoral reason for it and that it is practically the best option. We should not endorse practices that are not moral but we are not obliged to do something just because it is. If there is no reason to do something or if there is a practically better alternative (which is also moral), one cheaper or more effective for example, we can and should relinquish our moral right to carry out the first alternative.
If we take the Gulf War as an example, the Allied forces were morally right in intervening (wrongdoings morally deserve punishment), there was a valid reason to do so (to free the people of Kuwait from occupation) and, hopefully, we choose the practically best option (an air campaign followed by ground invasion).
Discrimination and Arbitrariness
In 1972, the United States Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment, as it was then being administered, was being applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner, which constituted “cruel and unusual punishment” and was therefore unconstitutional (Furman v Georgia, 1972). As a result of the Furman decision, states amended their death penalty statutes to address the Supreme Court's constitutional concerns. Most of the states introduced the pleading of mitigating and aggravating factors when considering a sentence of death.
However, some people claim that despite these improvements the death penalty still discriminates on grounds of race, sex and wealth or is simply arbitrary and therefore call for it's abolishment. There is not conclusive evidence for the truth of any of the above cases (though no system is perfect), but even if there were, it would still not be grounds for the abolishment of the death penalty but for another call for it's improvement. We do not abolish the workplace because it is sexist; we strive to remove the sexism. We do not remove the entire penal justice system because it discriminates; we try to reform it. Similarly, we should fight discrimination in the sentencing of the death penalty and not see it is as a call for its abolishment. The death penalty, in itself, is not inherently more discriminatory than any other form of punishment although the fact that it is more severe may create larger reservations. Are we willing to accept the inherent problems of inequality in any justice system when the sentence being considered is death and not imprisonment?
Christian Catechism
I include this section on the viewpoint of the Christian Church for two reasons. Firstly, because some people take their moral values from it's teaching and secondly because it makes a very good point. It is possible to make many out of context and easily misunderstood bible quotes on this topic but I will limit myself to quoting Pope John Paul II in his encyclical letter: Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) March 25, 1995. He clearly advocates the death penalty in some cases, but I believe many would agree with the following extract:
“In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: “If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.””
I believe this is one of the key questions of this debate: Are bloodless means sufficient?
Sanctity of Human Life
One argument, based in morality, commonly used against the death penalty is that it is an affront to the sanctity of human life. This is succinctly put in the bumper sticker: “We kill people to show that killing people is wrong”. Semantically, however, this is correctly put as: “We execute people to show that murder is wrong” (Casey Carmical, The Death Penalty: Morally Defensible?).
Life is the most fundamental right, rated above both freedom and personal property, but does this warrant it special protection? John Stuart Mill in a speech given before Parliament on April 21, 1868 in opposition to a bill banning capital punishment very eloquently suggests it does not:
“But I am surprised at the employment of this argument, for it is one which might be brought against any punishment whatever. It is not human life only, not human life as such, that ought to be sacred to us, but human feelings. The human capacity of suffering is what we should cause to be respected, not the mere capacity of existing. And we may imagine somebody asking how we can teach people not to inflict suffering by ourselves inflicting it? But to this I should answer--all of us would answer-- that to deter by suffering from inflicting suffering is not only possible, but the very purpose of penal justice. Does fining a criminal show want of respect for property, or imprisoning him, for personal freedom? Just as unreasonable is it to think that to take the life of a man who has taken that of another is to show want of regard for human life. We show, on the contrary, most emphatically our regard for it, by the adoption of a rule that he who violates that right in another forfeits it for himself, and that while no other crime that he can commit deprives him of his right to live, this shall.”
Furthermore, Edward Koch, former mayor of New York City, has said:
"It is by exacting the highest penalty for the taking of human life that we affirm the highest value of human life."
Indeed, it is the above arguments that have prompted people to say that we are morally obliged to execute murderers. As Chicago journalist Mike Royko stated:
“It's because I have so much regard for human life that I favor capital punishment. Murder is the most terrible crime there is. Anything less than the death penalty is an insult to the victim and society. It says…that we don't value the victim's life enough to punish the killer fully."
There is a certain transparent logic in taking the lives of those who take it from others, but why is this tit-for-tat thinking solely reserved for murder. The majority of people stopped advocating the literal application of “an eye for an eye” many years ago. Do we insult the victim of GBH by merely incarcerating the perpetrator and not insisting on reciprocal bodily damage? There are humane, surgical ways of removing limbs and yet we would condemn any suggestion of such punishment. Why? Because it is barbaric, uncivilised. Can the same be said of the death penalty?
If one believes that, morally, murdering somebody does deserve the punishment of death, one must also decide whether it is justified in every case. Many states in the U.S. have a system of aggravating circumstances (e.g. if the victim was under 12 years old, was an on duty fireman or was killed by discharging a firearm from a vehicle or while the perpetrator was attempting a burglary) and mitigating ones (e.g. if the defendant has no significant prior criminal conduct or was under 18 or was intoxicated at the time of the murder [all circumstances taken from Indiana Law]) for deciding if the death penalty is appropriate. Some of these circumstances seem a little arbitrary (obviously I have highlighted some of the more arbitrary ones) and therefore difficult to justify morally. As with discrimination, problems such as these cannot call for the abolition of the death penalty, simply for its improvement. However, any special cases that one does decide upon must be morally defensible.
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