CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Is the execution of people, by the state, morally right?

A question debated about for centuries, capital punishment remains a topical issue. A quick Google search can direct you to a variety of pro and anti-death penalty organisations, the most notable anti-death penalty organisation being Amnesty International. There exists a myriad of arguments supporting both sides of the debate: some of which have been used for centuries; other arguments reflect more recent ideas and beliefs.

Retributive justice is a theory that considers proportionate punishment an acceptable response to crime. Cicero stated, in De Legibus (written during the last years of the Roman Republic), “Let the punishment match the offense”. Most people find that this argument agrees with their intrinsic sense of justice. The retributivist theory of punishment leads to Kant's insistence on capital punishment. In his Metaphysics of Morals (1797), Kant argues that the only punishment possibly equivalent to death is death. However, there are issues of regarding proportionality as the justification for punishment. Firstly, you wouldn’t advocate sexual assault upon rapists as a means for justice! Additionally, the existentialist philosophers Dostoevsky and Camus comment on the uniqueness of death penalty in retribution: in that the anticipatory suffering of the criminal prior to their execution outweighs the anticipatory suffering of their victim, thus revealing a flaw in the retribution argument – a notion of ‘double punishment’. 

John Stuart Mill (Speech in Favour of Capital Punishment, 1868) believed that, in the case of murder, punishing someone by their own crime is acceptable; but even he acknowledged that if a mistaken person is convicted to death then there is no reprise. Unlike those who have been sentenced to life in prison, it is impossible to compensate executed prisoners should they later be proven innocent. There is absolutely no possibility of correction or compensation. This reality is as true today as it was in 1868! 

In the world today, the death penalty is at the focus of international law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), adopted by the United Nation’s General Assembly, recognises each person’s right to life: “no one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” (article 5). As Amnesty International points out on its homepage, the existence of the death penalty violates these rights! However, some may agree with the Kantian argument that a person forfeits their right to live if they instigate a murderous attack.

The great Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau stated in his infamous Social Contract (1762): “No man should be put to death… if he can be left to live without danger to society”. In many modern democratic institutions, life sentences have been deemed more favourable than capital punishment. The intention of incarceration is to remove criminals from society, thus eliminating their threat.

These are but a few of the many examples justifying why the death penalty is morally right or wrong. However, I believe that the reality of the potential execution of an innocent person alone provides the most compelling argument against the death penalty.