Capital Punishment: A Barbaric Practice
Some human actions are so heinous that one would have to make an extremely compelling case in order to justify them. Murdering somebody is an example of this, yet many societies that are supposed to be the epitome of progress, have adopted this method of castigation. The main argument that proponents of capital punishment allege is that this penalty deters evildoers from committing similar despicable acts. Nevertheless, this has constantly been proven to be wrong, and no scientific evidence has been found linking these two variables. The death penalty is not ethically permissible, as it implies providing people with inhumane treatment and does not have positive criminological effects.
Many different ethical theories would be against capital punishment, especially those that believe that people are the most important aspect of moral philosophy. Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative would disapprove because it would kill a person. For him, people should always be an end, not a means. This means that killing people in order to deter others would be completely unacceptable. Needless to say, if everybody was killed, there would not be anybody left on the planet. Therefore, Kant would be against the death penalty because it goes against humanity.
On the other hand, people that sustain virtue ethics would also be against it on the ground of it being simply not towards good. Moral philosophers who sustain that the compatibility or dissimilarity with respect to virtue is what should be taken into account when evaluating an action, would probably believe that killing someone is wrong, no matter what they did or what effect it could have on the rest of the population. For them, one should always act well, no matter what the consequences are.
The main problem with the death penalty is that it consciously punishes another person in an irremediable way. Obviously, after somebody is dead, they cannot come back to life again, and proponents would have to be very compelling and thorough in their arguments in order to convince that the positives outweigh the negatives. Capital punishment is very barbaric in the fact that it leads States to argue in favor of a lynching, committing an act that would be a crime if anybody else did it. Therefore, there is something inherently wrong with capital punishment that the people that uphold it have a very hard time attempting to dismiss.
Perhaps the greatest school that could defend the death penalty is Utilitarianism. According to Sunstein and Vermeule, “[i]f each execution is saving many lives, the harms of capital punishment would have to be very great to justify its abolition” (2005, p. 45). In this sense, Utilitarians would allege that the positive effects that this would cause in society would outweigh the negative effects that the person would go through. Nevertheless, the evidence found has pointed against this justification. “Our survey indicates that the vast majority of the world’s top criminologists believe that the empirical research has revealed the deterrence hypothesis for a myth” (Radelet & Lacock, 2009, p. 504). As one can see, there are no compelling grounds on which to sustain that capital punishment is ethical, as it does not even deter criminals from committing horrible crimes.
In conclusion, capital punishment is not ethical due to it involving the killing of a person, yet not even have deterring effects. Killing somebody is a very horrible deed, no matter what the person has done. It does not give them the chance to repent or otherwise become better. Therefore, there would have to be very compelling evidence supporting it, in order for it to be ethical. Nevertheless, scientific studies have shown that this type of castigation does not actually make criminals stop in their tracks. Therefore, capital punishment should not be considered ethical under any grounds.
Reference List
Radelet, M. L. & Lacock, T. L. (2009). Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates?: The Views of Leading Criminologists. The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 99(2). Retrieved from http://www.deathpenalty.org/downloads/RadeletDeterrenceStudy2009.pdf
Sunstein, C. S. & Vermeule, A. (2005). Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life-Life Tradeoffs. University of Chicago Law School, Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, Paper No. 85. Retrieved from file:///C:/Users/daniela/Downloads/SSRN-id691447.pdf
