Death Penalty

In response to your defense of your arguments" To even attempt to juxtapose murder together with utopia is scary. A utopia, defined as any place or state of ideal perfection [1], and murder, defined as the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another [2], don"t belong in the same sentence. Murder causes pain whether it be to the person dying or to his family/friends. This concept of pain does not belong in any place or state of ideal perfection, regardless of murder"s morality. I will concede on my argument for solitary confinement. However, this debate was not about solitary confinement versus the death penalty. I believe that sufficient evidence could be made both for and against solitary confinement, but it would be almost irrelevant to this discussion. [1] https://define.com... [2] http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com... As you point out, "what costs so much about the death penalty is in how we exercise it; it is the media coverage, the methods we use, the detailed trials." Although these are "not necessary for the death penalty," how would we eliminate them. As you state, "the true price of the death penalty, as with most things, comes from bureaucracy and all the pretenses of society." If these things have become an intrinsic part of our society, how could we eliminate them. Therefore, I argue that these factors must be counted when considering the true cost of the death penalty. In order to answer the question of murder"s immorality presented at the end of your second argument, we must first consider the idea of moral reasoning. Consequentialist moral reasoning (or utilitarianism) locates morality in the consequences of an act (in the state of the world that will result from the thing you do).[3] From, consequentialist standpoint murder is wrong because it deprives another person of everything. Furthermore, it causes other people pain, not only the pain of death, but also the pain felt by those who love and/or depend on them. Another similar stance is that murder is essentially stealing. It is the taking away of one"s life which can only be experienced once. Taking anything which is not rightfully yours destroys your capacity to value in a fundamental sense. By this definition, to steal someone"s life is immoral. In our current society, there can be no guarantee for the innocence of the defendant. The death penalty already is already supposed to only be used in the most extreme cases with overwhelming evidence, yet we continually have an issue with the murder of innocents. How could we ever conclude that "there is no possibility of error in their [the defendant"s] conviction?" In future, this argument may have to be restructured, but for now our criminal departments and our justice system are not to the point of making no mistakes. Until we reach this future of no inaccuracies, we are forced to acknowledge the irreversibility of the death penalty. If we continue to allow the death penalty, we will continue to accidentally murder innocents. As a society, I don"t think we are capable of living with this burden. [3] http://www.damianstorey.com... Thanks for debating with me. I enjoyed it. You made some impressive arguments that I certainly wasn't expecting. If you could, please let me know what you felt were my weakest arguments, and let me know if there is anything I could do to improve. Cheers!