Death penalty is never justified, under any circumstance

I am sure it would an interesting one. Death penalty has been a ever present concept throughout our history. The justification for the same can be broadly covered under the desire for some of the crimes having no place in a civilised society. And society universally condemning those crimes through the most severe punishment they can possibly enforce. I disagree with th epremise of the punishment, and during the course of the debate will point out exactly why I believe Death penalty has a regressive effect/ bearing on the society as a whole, and thus is unjust. I’ll argue on two basic premises- P1- There is no evidence to prove that death penalty lowers the crime rate. The literature on the impact of death penalty on the deterrence rate has been consistently non conclusive. While most deterrence research has found that the death penalty has virtually the same effect as long-term imprisonment on homicide rates, in the mid-1970's economist Isaac Ehrlich reported that he had uncovered a significant deterrent effect. Although scholars, including a panel appointed by the National Academy of Sciences, strongly criticized Ehrlich's work for methodological and conceptual shortcomings, it still continues to be cited as a prominent advocacy work. On April 2012, National Research Council was asked to assess whether the available evidence provides a scientific basis for answering questions of if and how the death penalty affects homicide rates. The committee examined studies that have been conducted on deterrence and the death penalty since the 1976 Supreme Court decision in Gregg vs. Georgia, which ended a four-year moratorium on executions. It concluded that “that research to date is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates. Therefore, these studies should not be used to inform deliberations requiring judgments about the effect of the death penalty on homicide. Claims that research demonstrates that capital punishment decreases or increases the homicide rate or has no effect on it should not influence policy judgments about capital punishment. ” [1] Thus, we have no evidence that death penalty lowers crime rate, or has a significant deterrence impact on crime rate. P2 – The moral justifications of the concept of death penalty are not valid. This quote in the ‘Introduction to the European Court of Justice” adequately summarises many of the arguments for death penalty. "Punishment is the way in which society expresses its denunciation of wrong doing; and, in order to maintain respect for the law, it is essential that the punishment inflicted for grave crimes should adequately reflect the revulsion felt by the great majority of citizens for them. It is a mistake to consider the objects of punishments as being a deterrent or reformative or preventive and nothing else. .. The truth is that some crimes are so outrageous that society insists on adequate punishment, because the wrong doer deserves it, irrespective of whether it is a deterrent or not. ” It basis the justification on two principles, the crime must be outrageous enough to warrant death penalty, and that killing the guilty is the society’s way to express the denunciation. Assume we have a person A who killed his wife, cut her into pieces and burnt them in a oven. [2] The crime is universally abhorrent, and the collective conscience condemns it. It’s so outrageous that the society believes that the perpetrator must be murdered in order to balance the wrongs done by him. Futile- The question that arises, however- is what would killing him achieve? Will it numb the pain of the girl killed? Unfortunately not, for she’s dead. Perhaps it will bring peace to the family of the girl? By what arithmetic will it diminish someone’s pain? Can you really measure the quantum of pain, and the quantum of reduction? Can the death of the girls be recompensed by the death of the perpetrator delivered cold by a hangman? Is an instant death a punishment worse than being socially excluded, and forced to relive his crimes, day after day? Devalues life- Let’s look at it from another perspective. Assume another person B was killed in a car accident caused because the other person was drunk. The society does not find this universally abhorrent, because its not rare. There’s no death penalty demanded in this case- because the death is run of the mill one. Is the pain of death for B’s family less than that of A? Given that both A’s and B’s murderers committed actions that lead to a death, doesn’t selectively unequal punishment for both of them a violation of *justice*? More on this later. Slippery slope – Finally, when the penalty is subject to contingencies as subjective as the public conscience- there is a extremely high probability of a slippery slope. In India, for example- the latest war-cry is death penalty to the rapists- something that has been legalised in 2013, and the first DP has already been handed out to 3 rapists [3]. In China, for example, it is legal to prosecute people in charge of corruption. Both of the punishments are acceptable because the society that awards them feels that the crimes deserve death. A state sponsored death. The severity of the crime that warrants a death penalty has reduced, because people are alright with killing people over some arbitrarily decided social standard. Because it is accepted that killing people is a justified punishment , anything that our collective conscience reprimands, becomes a murder- warranting crime. Tying together the framework, [a] we don’t know the deterrence impact of death penalty. Any argument stemming from the justification of it leading to fewer crimes in future is not based on empirical conclusions. For people who not care about empirical conclusions- it usually becomes about *punishing* a person who commits a crime so heinous that it violates the social conduct, the collective social conscience. [b] The problem with that, however, is that it devalues life of the people whose murderers/ violators do not deserve this punishment- *based on the recurrence of the crime in the society/ immunity of the society*. If we argue that it makes the people happy, or helps them come to peace with the death- the argument is flawed because the people then need therapy- not a medieval tooth for tooth philosophy followed by the state. And the same line of reasoning can lead to a lot of crimes coming under death penalty crimes- as evidenced by examples in India and China. The consequence of such a punishment is regressive for the well being of the society. There is no evidence it leads to lesser crimes, it devalues life, has a tendency to cater to the blood thirsty society and is ultimately futile for the people dealing with the brunt of the crime, given that the crime has already taken place. Death penalty as a punishment, therefore, is unjust. The resolution is affirmed. [1] . http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... [2] . http://en.wikipedia.org...[3] . http://edition.cnn.com...;