Akshar Shah
POLS 2010 – 01
December 14, 2018
New York Times article: Washington State Supreme Court Deems Death Penalty Unconstitutional
Date Published: October 11, 2018
Capital punishment is a difficult subject for a lot of people because many question whether or not it is ethical to kill a convicted criminal. For years, it has been used against criminals and continues to be used today, but for the past couple of years, this type of punishment has been reevaluated because of the ethical question. On the one hand, people who oppose the death penalty make a very strong point, in that, there have been several cases that the so-called criminal was actually a case of mistaken identity and wrongful conviction. They also believe that the threat of the death penalty ultimately is not a deterrent for criminal behavior. People will commit crimes regardless of the death penalty. Often, criminal behavior is committed with the sense that they will not get caught. So, in essence, they have no reason to be afraid of the death penalty.
On the other side of the debate, there are those that believe that the death penalty is a deterrent. For most criminals, they are aware of the fact that if they get caught, they will be sent to prison. However, other than being sent to prison, there are not really any other repercussions for committing a crime. They argue that if a person were to be presented with the possibility of the death penalty, they would more than likely think twice about their actions and realize that there are more risks than imprisonment.
Personally, I am against the death penalty and capital punishment due to many reasons including my religion and the ethical morals that I have. A New York Times article discussing this issue piqued my interest as it was about the Supreme Court of Washington abolishing the death penalty in their state. The article talked about how the practice was deemed unconstitutional and commuted the sentences of the eight men currently on the state’s death row to life in prison. It also mentioned that “a five-member majority on the State Supreme Court did not say that executing people who commit heinous crimes is inherently wrong, but said evidence showed that death sentences had been ‘imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.’” If not for the image that death penalties portrayed to other people, it still very well may have not been abolished in Washington. The members of the court said that they were very confident that the association between race and the death penalty is not attributed to random chance.
Use of the death penalty has been declining across the nation for nearly two decades now yet capital punishment still remains legal in 30 states as well as for the federal government and United States military. The main reason why the members of the court chose to get rid of the death penalty was because they believed that it offended the constitutional rights of American citizens. The main goal is to replace it with life imprisonment without the “possibility of parole.” This point is revisited at the end of the article with the statement: “Where a system exists permeated with arbitrary decision-making, random imposition of the death penalty, unreliability, geographic rarity and excessive delays, such a system cannot constitutionally stand.”
This New York Times article discussed how the death penalty is unconstitutional which is one of the many reasons why I think that capital punishment is unfair. Another explanation for why I am against it is because it takes away from the value of human life. I believe that each human life is valuable and only those who are in favor of capital punishment should justify their position. Also, the justice system is not perfect and has flaws which means that eventually, if not already, innocent people will get charged and killed for an act they did not commit. Witnesses, jurors, and prosecutors can all make mistakes. When this is coupled with the faults in the system, it’s inevitable that people who did not commit the crime will be convicted of it.
I feel as if my ethical approach is the most similar to Immanuel Kant’s beliefs on capital punishment. Kant’s categorical imperative seeks to act with accordance to a general rule. The general rule applied is difficult, given the different crimes that occur in the world. He would also pose the question of whether or not the death penalty is using a human as a means to an end. According to the categorical imperative, “society and individuals must act in such a way that you can will that your actions become a universal law for all to follow.” Kant’s view on crime is that society makes laws and that, if they are broke, punishment must follow. The purpose of punishment is not to benefit anyone, but rather a form of penalization. It is essential to see Kant’s view with regard to only murder as the death penalty is put upon people who have committed murder typically. He works on the basis that we cannot punish for the sake of the benefit of society, because some innocent people can be deemed unnecessary for society and still remain innocent of crime. Kant works on the view that society and government have laws, and people that break those laws will be penalized. “Laws that are broken without punishment are flimsy,” said Kant. A weak law is then an indication of a weak society. I think that I agree with Kant in the sense that the death penalty is not a strong law and it isn’t necessary to deter crime from happening, because it doesn’t serve that purpose anyway.
I also argue against capital punishment because I believe that retribution is wrong. Retribution is inflicting punishment on someone as vengeance for committing a crime. Revenge itself is another issue that I would also argue against due to my beliefs, but I genuinely think that retribution is morally wrong as well as problematic in concept and in practice. The fact of why I think vengeance remains a major ingredient in the public popularity of capital punishment is because of daily examples that occur throughout the nation. This includes mobs attacking prison vans containing people accused of murder from or to court, or aggressively chanting outside prisons when an offender is being executed. Retribution is not a good argument for capital punishment because if it stands for people getting what they deserve, then the innocent people on death row should not be there.
Usually, the majority of people on death row have committed an act of murder themselves. This makes the death penalty unique, but not positively. What I mean by this is that crimes other than murder don’t receive a punishment which mimics their crime. For example, rapists are not punished with sexual assault, and people guilty of assault are not publicly beaten up. Murder is a serious offense, but that doesn’t necessarily make it worse than other crimes which is why the death penalty is wrongfully used. Also, only a small number of murderers are actually executed which leads me to impose that capital punishment on a few selected random handful of offenders does not amount to a fair or consistent system of retribution.
People also believe that the death penalty deters people from committing crimes, but research shows otherwise. The actuality is that the likelihood of being caught and punished is what deters people from crime. My own morals are what convince me that capital punishment is wrong, because I personally believe that sometimes life time imprisonment is a worse punishment than death and is honestly cheaper. There was a case about Timothy McVeigh who bombed Oklahoma City over 20 years ago, and the cost for executing him was over thirteen million dollars.
As a firm of believer of the Hinduism religion, another reason why I cannot support capital punishment is because we oppose any killing, violence, or revenge; and the death penalty utilizes all of those.
In nations that approve of capital punishment such as certain states of the United States of America, their reasoning lies in the idea that through death penalty, people would avoid making crimes that would lead to their death. State ruling also reasons out that through capital punishment, people would fear being involved in great crimes. However, I believe that capital punishment has an effect that is opposed to this belief. Criminals who get involved in grave crimes do not have time thinking of this sort of logic; criminals would be more focused on committing their crimes rather than the repercussions of their actions. Instead, capital punishment in itself can trigger more grave crimes for criminals would see the crimes they commit as their last. Despite all this, when the debate is focused on morality, the automatic understanding is that the death penalty is unreasonable. Cutting short the life of a criminal may be reasonable to the victims, but this is a blinded perception of the justice system. Ultimately, the issue of death penalty continues to raise questions and concerns because of how life is connected to what is ethical; and death penalty which is part of capital punishment, is simply one of the many subjects where ethics is erased from the minds of humans.