Is the Death Penalty Moral
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The death penalty is the only punishment for a crime that is permanent and cannot be undone once the chemicals flow down the needle into the flesh the deed is done it doesn’t matter anymore if the person did the crime or not because that person is dead.
Now saying that you may notice that I said person twice the death penalty kills human life. Taking a human life is wrong, but let us look at some other reasons why the death penalty is immoral. In this analysis for the sake of argument only first degree murder which is eligible for the death penalty will be discussed.
Lex talionis an eye for an eye. Simple principle what you do should be done to you. But this principle is not carried out through the justice system because according to this principle shoplifters should be stole from, arsonist should be burned, and prostitutes should have to pay for sex. It does not correlate arsonist are not burned and prostitutes aren’t punished by having to pay for sex. Yet murderers are murdered. For something to be moral it just can’t be moral in one situation.
The counter argument to this clearly wrong principle is the equal punishment principle, the crime and punishment doesn’t have to be identical just equal, meaning that the pain caused by an arsonist or a shoplifter should be redistributed to them. This however doesn’t give us any answers as it is hard if not impossible to figure out how much pain a shoplifter or arsonist caused let alone a prostitute who deals in the business of pleasure not pain. this argument would also require us to behave barbarically for barbaric crimes such as a serial killer who butchers their victims, according to this argument we should not only kill the serial killer but we should also butcher him as he butchers his victims. This argument is unnerving, for what justice is there if we ourselves commit the same crime even if it is not to an innocent person.
Another view to consider when talking about the death penalty is the Proportional Retributivism; proportional retribution requires the punishment to fit the crime in a proportional respect, so that serious crimes receive harsh punishments. This sets up a table so to speak from one to ten, one being crimes of petty theft and ten being murder.
Proportional retributivism offers a more morally and civilly viable form of retribution. Proportional retributivism offers a morally justifiable theory of punishment that takes into
account and serves justice, the criminal’s guilt, and society’s duty to punish. However this theory has a flaw on its table of “crime and punishment” as all other crimes on the scale require a fine or jail time where murder requires death. The table looses its proportionality there and the theory falls apart.
Knowing these arguments and their flaws, brought about a discussion in class about the sanctity of human life, killing a person is morally wrong, but is killing a murderer wrong? This is the crux of the argument for or against the death penalty being moral; is a murderer still a human? Humans have certain natural rights