Death Penalty

Arguments for:
"[W]e reserve the death penalty in the United States for the most heinous murders
and the most brutal and conscienceless murderers. This is not, as some critics
argue, a kind of state-run lottery that randomly chooses an unlucky few for the
ultimate penalty from among all those convicted of murder. Rather, the capital
punishment system is a filter that selects the worst of the worst...

Put another way, to sentence killers like those described above to less than death
would fail to do justice because the penalty – presumably a long period in prison –
would be grossly disproportionate to the heinousness of the crime. Prosecutors,
jurors, and the loved ones of murder victims understand this essential point...

Perhaps most importantly, in its supreme gravity it [the death penalty] promotes
belief in and respect for the majesty of the moral order and for the system of human
law that both derives from and supports that moral order."

Edward Feser, PhD

Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College
Joseph M. Bessette, PhD
Alice Tweed Tuohy Professor of Government and Ethics at Claremont McKenna
College
"Why the Death Penalty Is Still Necessary,"
catholicworldreport.com
July 21, 2016

"We have the responsibility to punish those who deserve it, but only to the degree
they deserve it. Retributivists do not justify the death penalty by the general
deterrence or safety it brings us. And we reject over-punishing no less than
under-punishing. How obscene that aggravated murderers who behave well inside
prison watch movies and play softball.

Regardless of future benefits, we justify punishment because it's deserved. Let the
punishment fit the crime…

Opponents [of the death penalty] wrongly equate retribution and revenge, because
they both would inflict pain and suffering on those who have inflicted pain and
suffering on us.
Whereas revenge knows no bounds, retribution must be limited, proportional and
appropriately directed: The retributive punishment fits the crime…

We should only execute those who most deserve it. And not randomly. Refine our
death penalty statutes and review the sentences of everyone on death row. Release
into general population those who don't really deserve to die. The rest we should
execute — worst first."

Robert Blecker, JD
Professor of Law at New York Law School
"Q&A: Death Penalty Proponent Robert Blecker,”
dallasnews.com
Apr. 2014

against:
● The death penalty is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it.
● The use of the death penalty for crimes committed by people younger than 18
is prohibited under international human rights law, yet some countries still
sentence to death and execute juvenile defendants.
● It is irreversible and mistakes happen. Execution is the ultimate, irrevocable
punishment: the risk of executing an innocent person can never be eliminated.
Since 1973, for example, more than 160 prisoners sent to death row in the
USA have later been exonerated or released from death row on grounds of
innocence. Others have been executed despite serious doubts about their
guilt.
● It does not deter crime. Countries who execute commonly cite the death
penalty as a way to deter people from committing crime. This claim has been
repeatedly discredited, and there is no evidence that the death penalty is any
more effective in reducing crime than life imprisonment.
● It is often used within skewed justice systems. In many cases recorded by
Amnesty International, people were executed after being convicted in grossly
unfair trials, on the basis of torture-tainted evidence and with inadequate legal
representation. In some countries death sentences are imposed as the
mandatory punishment for certain offences, meaning that judges are not able
to consider the circumstances of the crime or of the defendant before
sentencing.
● It is discriminatory. The weight of the death penalty is disproportionally carried
by those with less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds or belonging to a
racial, ethnic or religious minority. This includes having limited access to legal
 representation, for example, or being at greater disadvantage in their
experience of the criminal justice system.
● It is used as a political tool. The authorities in some countries, for example
Iran and Sudan, use the death penalty to punish political opponents.

Bibliography

American Civil Liberties Union. (2019). ​Capital Punishment​. [online] Available at:
https://www.aclu.org/issues/capital-punishment [Accessed 30 Nov. 2019].

Anon, (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.amnesty.org › what-we-do ›

death-penalty [Accessed 30 Nov. 2019].

Deathpenalty.procon.org. (2019). Top 10 Pro & Con Arguments - Death Penalty -

ProCon.org. [online] Available at:
https://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=002000 [Accessed
30 Nov. 2019].