Unfortunate. I wish they hadn’t done this, I’ve always felt that for the most depraved and heinous of crimes, execution is absolutely justified as a punishment.
Exactly. While it is true that inmates of color tend to be disproportionately sent to death row, and while it is also true that some innocent people do end up getting killed before their innocence is discovered, this is an indictment of US criminal justice system and how it chooses who gets punished and who doesn't, not an indictment of capital punishment.
And folks reading this, spare me from your "it's the moral thing to do!" remarks. Morality is purely subjective, and I for one think that the morally correct thing to do to a murderer is to give them a taste of their own medicine. Capital punishment is a harsh and dire punishment, but that's why it should be reserved for the harshest and most dire crimes.
So rapists should be given a sentence of being raped? Those convicted of violent assaults beaten black and blue by the agents of the state? The ‘eye for an eye’ argument makes little sense.
My reasons for opposing the death penalty are twofold; first, the moral dimension, that I believe the right to life to be absolute (as without, the bases for all other rights crumble away), and I do not think the state should have the immense power to take a life.
Secondly, for practical reasons; the death penalty does absolutely nothing to reduce crime, but is expensive, inconsistently applied, and cannot be overturned. Even if I didn’t have a moral objection on principle to the death penalty, these practical factors mean that I would never actually want to see it used in practice, as the risks far outweigh the rewards.
You say that the problem is unfairness within the US criminal justice system, not the death penalty itself. It is absolutely true that the US should be doing a lot more to correct these injustices, but even in the most progressive criminal justice system, human nature and probability mean that an element of bias and mistakes will always remain, rendering the death penalty too dangerous to implement.
The state absolutely should have the right to take the life of those who show no regard for the life of others or are pretty clearly a danger, yes. To say that under
no circumstances that the state cannot, is to say that a nation’s military (which is certainly “The State”) should not be allowed to use lethal force. Or that law enforcement (which arguably could be considered “The State”) should not use force against hostile, armed individuals. Now, crimes should be met with appropriate and reasonable punishment, and murder, terrorism, etc... are crimes that really shouldn’t just be dealt with through jail time. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that guilty people deserve to be punished in proportion to the severity of their acts. If an individual shows such a callous disregard for the life of innocents, what reason is their to use taxpayer dollars to protect their life and keep them around for decades and decades?
The overwhelmingly majority of people placed on death row, and who have their executions carried out are, indeed guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. The chance of a wrongful execution is
extremely unlikely. In my view, the existence of bias or potential for mistakes in no way makes the death penalty “dangerous”, for no system is perfect. It’s impossible for anything to be perfect. But if a product has a 96% success rate, it is well within reason to use it accordingly.
Poll
