Death Penalty
Published by Yazad Jal October 23rd, 2003 in StimulantsIs there a contradiction between the right to life and the death penalty? Can a society have both?
I think the two are not incompatible. There are certain criminal acts whose punishment should be a revokation of the rights of the criminal. That’s the reason why we jail thieves and kidnappers. If you violate someone else’s right to property / freedom, your right to property and your right to freedom will be forfeited. And if you commit murder (not accidental death due to negligence), you forfeit your right to life. I think that’s fair.
If the life of one person is a potential hazard to others living in the society, I think the law has the complete right to put an end to that life. Afterall, the innocent people have right to life too.
I agree with you.
Would you also approve of castration as a punishment for rape and whipping as a punishment for assault?
That’s a trick question by the way. I actually support the death penalty and oppose castration as a punishment for rape. But the point is, this is a value judgement we are making. But which side of the death-penalty fence a person is on depends on what weight he gives to the following factors.
1) Justice (i.e. people will be unhappy if a person who murders 100 people stays in jail undead.)
2) Deterring the criminal
3) Deterring others
4) Reforming the criminal
5) At the same time we shouldn’t dehumanize ourselves to accept torture, etc. as an appropriate punishment.
There might be others, but you get the point. There are some places where you just can’t avoid utilitarian decision-making.
Your(Yazad’s) views are more than a little problematic because you are assuming that the trial process by which the conclusion that a murder has been commited is reached, is fair and that the judges/juries involved are aware of all the circumstances that surround the crime.
Also taking an economic take on the “eye for an eye” notions of the law in general, since the loss of utility is essentially a subjective matter, it is difficult to assess the actual loss to the aggrieved party. This has been the cause of much debate over the extensive use of the law of torts in recent American history. It is difficult to say how accurately a group of disinterested people can assess how much the cost of a particular intangible loss is to a person, and also whether the loss to the criminal will be sufficiently large for it to qualify as a punishment or in fact be too large and unfair.
With specific regard to the death penalty again i think considering the fact that information may or may not be adequate it is better to have something like a life-imprisonment sentence which allows for a possibility of reversal in case some new information becomes available at a later stage, than to take the drastic and irreversible step of killing the person which may be a miscarriage of justice.
The Death Penalty also prompts the question “How most humanely to kill a person?”, which i find quite oxymoronic.
Considering the fallibility of human beings it is fairer that justice be a reversible process rather than a final one.
1) If the loss of utility is “essentially subjective”, then it is an argument against any kind of punishment, not just death penalty. After all, how do we know that the trauma suffered by a rape victim is worth only 10 years in the slammer for the perpetrator, and not 8 or 15?
2) “How most humanely to kill a person” is oxymoronic?
Not at all. Most people, even non-vegetarians, support slaughtering animals in the most humane way possible. The justification for humane killing is not so much that it causes less pain to the subject, but that killing brutally dehumanizes the executioner (and the society that sanctions it).
3) I realise that the death penalty is irreversible, but so are 10 years of a person’s life, if new evidence surfaces after 10 years. I am not making a smartass point; I am only saying that irreversibility is somewhat overrated. It is just one of the factors in the cost-benefit analysis (which I have admitted will give different results for different people depending on what you value more) rather than a clincher.
I must admit that i personally prefer a more christian approach though that is a rather impracticible one in the real world. Besides christianity is not a very popular line of thoughts with Yazad and i’m guessing with many other people who regularly visit this site :-).
But since we are in the real world, the threat of punishment is an important tool for civil society though it’s objective is to overcome such threats to its constituents. Since we have to have a system based on the objectivisation of subjectivity we might as well have the one that has the least irreversible consequences.
Take for instance (not a very good instance) the Dreyfus affair, when the Jewish Officer was accused of spying for Germany in 1894, had he been killed immediatly after the first trial that would have been the end of the affair and the French government would have achieved a patriotic victory. But not many years later when it was found that he was infact the object of an anti-semitic conspiracy he was exonerated, and the instituitional bias against Jews was exposed. Though the effect was that he lost 5 years of his life. (He eventually went on to command one of the forts defending Paris in WWI and was later inducted in the Legion d’Honour).
The “humane” methods of killing are still quite oxymoronic in my view because the final consequence is murder, an irreversible condition caused by the wilfull enaction of force upon someone rendered defenceless. Whether there is social sanction (as in Sati or the Death Penalty) or only individual convictions (Honour Killings) and whether it is achieved by breaking the neck or slowly torturing the body it all leads to death.
New to your blog. Like it.
While I think it’s fair, I don’t think it really solves the problem. When a child behaves badly you just don’t slap him/her and forget about it, you try to correct him/her and try to understand why he/she did what he/she did. I think the same is necessay when we deal with criminals, no matter what the crime.
I don’t think Yaz is trying to make the point that it’s fair in the eye-for-an-eye sense. I think the point is that if we accept that some rights can be curtailed as punishment, then the right to life can also be curtailed as punishment where warranted. I don’t hear anything about the death penalty being fair punishment for anything.
I am not disputing yaz’s point, only extending it. I am only trying to figure out criteria to choose “appropriate punishment”. “Justice” or “fairness” is certainly a criterion.
Can you answer the question “Why not have death as punishment for petty theft?” without referring to fairness, i.e that the punishment should be somewhat proportionate to the crime?
If so, why not castration for rape and whipping as a punishment for assault? That’s roughly the line of reasoning I took. That’s where the multiple criteria thing came in.
I think I am with you on this one.
I personally think the death penalty is not fair. Why put someone to death and then repeat the same crime just legally? Your doing a crime killing the person who did a crime. it doesn’t make sense. IT’S JUST NOT RIGHT.
kill em>.
Many people who are against capital punishment are only thinking of the person who committed the crime and how cruel it is for them, but shouldn’t we think of the families that are broken apart because of the heartless acts of these criminals? Capital Punishment is not immoral. It is the best way to ensure safety from criminals. Referring to the Natural Rights of Americans: the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to freedom, you’ll think that everyone deserves these no matter what. But if you think even harder you might realize that criminals don’t have rights. The Bible says “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” He who violates that right in another sacrifices it for himself. That’s the morality behind capital punishment.
The longer a person spends imprisoned, the higher the risk of escape, or committing a crime while in prison. Even when a criminal is sentenced to life without parole, innocent people are not safe from them. As long as the murderer lives, there is always a chance, no matter how small, that he will strike again. And Taxpayers should not have to support criminals living in comfort for years. Do you think that people who go to prison for a crime actually learn their lesson? No. Prison fosters resentment, anger, and rage. They can’t wait to get out into society and break the law again. Do you think that when they are released they won’t have figured out how to not get caught again? No. They get out being smarter and more rebellious towards the government. Putting a murderer away for life just isn’t good enough.
One argument to capital punishment is the question: “Why do we kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” That two wrongs do not make a right, therefore, executions are equivalent to murder. First of all, the term murder is specifically defined in any dictionary as the UNLAWFUL killing of a person with hatred and premeditation. So logically, the word murder cannot be used to describe executions since the death penalty is the law. Second of all, comparing executions to murders is like comparing incarcerating people to kidnapping. There is a difference between violent crime and punishment. One displays a serious lack of moral judgment to believe that just because two practices share a physical similarity means that they are morally identical. And moral aspects examine the reasons and motivations behind one’s actions. What separates crime from punishment, murder from execution, are not their physical aspects but rather their moral aspects.
Incarceration does not equal rehabilitation. And the death penalty does not equal murder. Capital punishment is the only penalty severe enough to make criminals think twice before committing major crimes.
As for castration, i’m all for it. the fuckers don’t deserve dicks when they abuse the purpose of them, especially when they get sick pleasure from it