Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment вЂ" It’s Time to Turn the Other Cheek

If... he has committed murder, he must die. In this case, there is no

substitute that will satisfy the legal requirements of legal justice.There is no

sameness of kind between death and remaining alive even under the most miserable

conditions, and consequently there is no equality between crime and the

retribution unless the criminal is judicially condemned and put to death."

Immanuel Kant.

About 2000 men, women, and teenagers currently wait on America's "Death

Row." Their time grows shorter as federal and state courts increasingly ratify

death penalty laws, allowing executions to proceed at an accelerated rate. It's

unlikely that any of these executions will make the front page, having become

more and more a matter of routine in the last decade. Indeed, recent public

opinion polls show a wide margin of support for the death penalty. But human

rights advocates continue to decry the immorality of state-sanctioned killing in

the U.S., the only western industrialized country that continues to use the

death penalty. Is capital punishment moral?

Capital punishment is often defended on the grounds by the government,

that society has a moral obligation to protect the safety and the welfare of its

citizens. Murderers threaten this safety and welfare. Only by putting murderers

to death can society ensure that convicted killers do not kill again.

Second, those favoring capital punishment contend that society should

support those practices that will bring about the greatest balance of good over

evil, and capital punishment is one such practice. Capital punishment benefits

society because it may deter violent crime. While it is difficult to produce

direct evidence to support this claim since, by definition, those who are

deterred by the death penalty do not commit murders, common sense tells us that

they will die if they perform a certain act, they will be unwilling to perform

that act. If the threat of death stays in the hand of a would-be murder, and we

abolish the death penalty, we will sacrifice the lives of many innocent victims

whose murders could have been deterred. But if, in fact, the death penalty does

not deter, and we continue to impose it, we have only sacrificed the lives of

convicted murderers. Surely it is better for society to take a gamble that the

death penalty deters in order to protect the lives of innocent people than to

take a gamble that it doesn't deter and thereby protect the lives of murderers,

while risking the lives of the innocents.

Finally, defenders of capital punishment argue that justice demands that

those convicted of "heinous" crimes be sentenced to death. Justice is

essentially a matter of ensuring that everyone is treated equally (excluding

criminals). It is unjust when a criminal deliberately and wrongly inflicts

greater losses on others than he or she has to bear. If the losses society

imposes on criminals are less than those the criminals imposed on their innocent

victims, society would be favoring criminals, allowing them to get away with

bearing fewer costs than their victims had to bear." Justice requires that

society impose on criminals losses equal to those they imposed on innocent

persons. By inflicting death on those who deliberately inflict death on others,

the death penalty ensures justice for all." (Berns)

The case against capital punishment is often made on the basis that

society has a moral obligation to protect human life, not take it. The taking of

human life is permissible only if it is a necessary condition to achieving the

greatest balance of good over evil for everyone involved. Given the value we

place on life and our obligation to minimize suffering and pain whenever

possible, if a less severe alternative to the death penalty exists which would

accomplish the same goal, we are duty bound to reject the death penalty in favor

of the less severe alternative.

There is no evidence to support the claim that the death penalty is a