The Death Penalty Should Be Abolished

I. The Right to LifeThe right to life is, arguably, the most important right. Any action that violates another right, yet helps to maintain life, could thus be seen as justified. Incarceration is one such justifiable action. The incarceration of a murderer, while violating the murderer’s right to his pursuit of happiness, helps to maintain the right of life of the people he would have killed had he not be incarcerated. It’s a little more complicated if the criminal’s crime didn’t take anyone’s life, but those cases are irrelevant to the current discussion. In addition, eye-for-an-eye justice is flawed. Looking at the justification both for the existence of rights and the existence of the right to life, there’s nothing that indicates that the taking of one life should be punished with the ending of the life who committed the act. Justice can be had in many ways, and this retributive justice has not been justified by my opponent. While I have argued for the existence of the right to life, my opponent has not conclusively argued for the proposition that the right to life should be violated in cases of murder. Nowhere in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is there a clause that says that people who violate any of the rights listed in the document forfeit any of those rights for themselves. In fact, to prove this, let me cite the very quote my opponent did – “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein. ” This sentence can be better interpreted as saying that no state should have the ability to destroy the rights of any person. [1]My opponent’s quotations of Thomas Jefferson are irrelevant. Just because he personally believed in the death penalty doesn’t mean that the death penalty doesn’t violate the right to life. All it indicates is that there was a discrepancy between his beliefs as to what rights humans have and his beliefs in how criminals should be handled. And his beliefs, in no way, affect the fact that one of the founding documents the country was founded upon, the Declaration of Independence, says that Americans have the right to life. There’s no question that the death penalty violates the right to life. And, considering that retributive justice is simplistic and based too heavily on emotions, and that my opponent has not justified his claim that violating the right to life in such a way is justified, such a policy should not be enacted. II. Psychological EffectsMy opponent is correct that my source four in round two considered the victims’ families and not the perpetrators’ families, and that I cited it incorrectly. Nevertheless, that report highlighted the inequality that exists in the care provided to victims’ families who don’t support the death penalty and those who do, and not the effect the crime itself had on the victims’ families. In addition, my opponent has failed to consider my fifth source, which does consider the perpetrators’ families. Also, while incarceration inevitably inflicts a toll on the criminal’s family, it is significantly less than the toll that is inflicted when the criminal is executed. Any amount of automation still requires people to start the equipment when an execution needs to be performed. Even today, lethal injections are not performed by doctors personally injecting a deadly chemical, but by machines that are run by technicians. These people can still be considered executioners. Even if we had robots that could perform executions without any direct human influence, the robots would still require technicians to direct the robots to kill the intended prisoner. These people can also be considered executioners. Not all death row criminals are placed in solitary confinement. However, some have to be because they are too great a risk to other prisoners. These criminals can’t be simply released into the general prison population. And even if someone has committed a heinous act, there’s still no reason to subject them to solitary confinement for years on end, all the while uncertain of whether or not they’re going to live to see the next day. Not even the vast majority of inmates on death row forced their victims to go through such torture. III. Mental IllnessThe source I cited in round two regarding this subject only considered mental illnesses relevant to the discussion. In addition, it showed that trials are being conducted even in cases where the defendant has a clearly visible mental illness that would inhibit their ability to understand the consequences of their actions, or worse. While there are cases where the mental competency of a criminal fades in the time between they committed the criminal act and their trial, these are relatively few in number, and still indicates that the criminal had mental problems at the time they committed the criminal act. While we do need to do something to protect people from those who murder due to an underlying mental illness, executing them is a downright inhumane way to do so. It would be much better if those criminals were kept in a metal institution and were cared for extensively by psychologists. This still neutralizes the threat that these people impose on others, and it also doesn’t involve the killing of someone just because they are unable to understand the consequences of their actions. It is hardly the fault of the person suffering from mental illness for having that illness, and, consequently, it is unfair to judge that person for committing heinous acts. They should indeed be kept away from society, but in mental institutions rather than execution rooms. IV. The InnocentMy opponent’s counter to my argument here seems to be one of utilitarianism – murderers kept in jail have the potential to murder again, so it is best to execute them, even though a few innocent people may be wrongly executed, as the number of people wrongly executed is less than the number of murders that would be committed if all murderers were kept in prison instead of executed. However, there are a number of problems with appealing to a utilitarian argument like such. One, my opponent hasn’t proved that the number of innocent people executed is less than the number of murders that would be committed if all murderers were kept in prison instead of executed. While the exact number of innocent people who have been executed is uncertain, given the fact that 1,320 criminals have been executed since 1977 and the fact that several studies have shown that around 4% of criminals on death row are innocent, around 50 innocent people have been executed since 1977. In fact, we have many personal exonerations in that time. It is impossible to say how many more people would die as a result of all murders getting life imprisonment instead of execution, but, if all murderers likely to murder again are given life imprisonment, given the fact that very few murderers escape prison, the number of additional people murdered would probably not approach 50. [2][3]Two, this kind of moral arithmetic, measuring the efficacy of the death penalty by balancing lives lost, is overly simplistic. Remember that there are many other problems with the death penalty, including the fact that it violates the right to life, that it causes psychological problems in the executed, the executed’s families, and the executioner, and that it is more expensive than life imprisonment, the scales are unquestionably tipped against the death penalty. It’s impossible to say just how much each contribution is, but the negatives I just outlined are certainly significant. And three, it’s questionable whether we should be engaging in such moral arithmetic in the first place. Utilitarianism is a questionable moral system at best, particularly in current philosophical discussions and this sort of moral arithmetic is definitely an application of utilitarianism. Given that my opponent has failed to show why such a system is a good one to base their argument off of, I’d question whether this argument has any foundation in the first place. [4]“The most common argument against act utilitarianism is that it gives the wrong answers to moral questions. Critics say that it permits various actions that everyone knows are morally wrong. ” One common example is, “If a judge can prevent riots that will cause many deaths only by convicting an innocent person of a crime and imposing a severe punishment on that person, act utilitarianism implies that the judge should convict and punish the innocent person. ”[4]Thus, given that there’s no way to estimate how many more people would be killed if the death penalty was replaced by life imprisonment, that utilitarian moral arithmetic is more complicated than a simple comparison of lives saved, and that such a utilitarian moral structure can hardly be justified, the arguments my opponent has given to justify the fact that a few innocents are killed are flawed. ConclusionI have shown that the death penalty violates the unalienable right to life and causes avoidable harm to those on death row, their families, and those who carry out the executions, that the death penalty often results in innocent people being executed, and that the death penalty is more expensive than life imprisonment. My opponent’s arguments are based off of flawed moral systems, faulty assumptions, and an overeager desire for retributive justice. Given all this, there’s simply no reason the death penalty should be a part of any civilized society, much less one living in the current conditions we are living in. Sources[1]: . http://www.un.org...[2]: . http://www.forbes.com...[3]: . http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...[4]: . http://www.iep.utm.edu...