CRITICAL THINKING AND REASONING-PHIL 102

Capital Punishment

According to the position of ethics and morality, capital punishment is entirely unjustified. I support the idea that “ethical questions surrounding physician participation in executions cannot be easily separated from more general questions about the morality of capital punishment” (Kadlac 2014). When we talk about capital punishment, we are referring to the death penalty or execution, lethal injection, or physician participation that can harm, cause pain or death to an individual (Block 2015). Some philosopher tends to agree on the notion that capital punishment is confined strictly to the crime of murder. “Death strikes as the only punishment that is fitting for people who take the lives of others” (Kadlac, 2014). John Stuart Mill is one of the utilitarian philosophers who have a similar argument that the death penalty is the “least cruel punishment that works to deter murder” (Barbara & Andrew 2019). Immanuel Kant based his idea on the retributivist argument that supported the respect of human dignity. According to Kant, “the death penalty is justified because it treats a murderer as a rational being, giving him or her what he or she deserves according to the basic principle of retributive”(Barbara & Andrew 2019). I agree with the philosophers that all legal punishment ought to make people pay for the wrong they have done to others. Another argument is about how capital punishment, in most cases, it targets “innocent people who are put to death for murders they did not commit” (Thomson 2002). Philosopher Jeremy Bentham argued that the innocent should not suffer, and thus it would be better if the death penalty is replaced by life imprisonment (Barbara & Andrew 2019. I think most philosophers tried to use ethical approaches to abolish the death penalty as a capital punishment (Steiker 2005).

In utilitarianism, they argue that that punishment tends to prevent and reduce crime, but on the side of capital punishment, especially the death penalty brings a strong deterrent effect. The death penalty has many times caused debates where people believe it would be better if we replace it long prison sentences because both are equal to punishment and can help to keep criminals off the streets. Another reason for punishment is to increase public safety. When criminals are punished, people will avoid doing wrong or going against the law, and as a result, crime will reduce. Utilitarian reasoning is that “if the death penalty does not deter crime” (Barbara & Andrew 2019), then we must look for the option of another form punishment. Deter means preventing future crime. This takes us to find answers to the questions of the nature of legal punishment and let us think about the ethics of the death penalty. The main difference between legal punishments with other forms of punishment is that legal punishment ought to follow specific laws and rules. “It is authorized by a legal entity and follows a set of rules that establish who is to be punished, how, and by how much” (Barbara & Andrew 2019). A good example of an incident that is not legal punishment is lynching because, in most cases, it is done by mob justice and not under constituted authority.

Legal punishment is a penalty for doing what the law forbids, and it involves “the state’s infliction of harm or pain on those who break the law, according to a set of legally established rules” (Barbara & Andrew 2019). A legal punishment must come from any legal system such as the courts, and to undergo punishment, you must first have committed a crime or be a suspect. But is the act of causing harm or pain morally justified? (Kadlac 2014) I think society has no right to inflict any sort of pain as a punishment on its members. The big question is, are all legal punishments morally justifiable? We can focus on the idea of deterrence or prevention, which supports the views of utilitarianism. Remember, we are taking the death penalty as one of capital punishment and legal punishment. Utilitarian believe that legal punishment is morally justifiable, but only if the punishment deter crime (Block 2015). When the punishment does not work, then we say that it is not morally justifiable. The justice of capital punishment has also brought big debate on the execution process and thus shed light on whether the death penalty is morally justified (Kadlac 2014). We had said that legal punishment must follow laws or rules of these same laws have a big a purpose to prevent us from harming each other. And “Since our laws presumably are directed to achieving some good, penalties for breaking these laws should help ensure that the good intended by the laws will be achieved”(Barbara & Andrew 2019). But are all laws good to us?

Utilitarianism theory focuses on the consequentialist rationale, and in our case of legal punishment, we consider the outcome or consequences of punishment, which is to deter people from doing the crime. That is, punishment works as a deterrent, and by holding out a legal punishment as a threat, it will prevent people from breaking the law. There is a great relationship between utilitarian perspective and deterrence rationale in that both raises questions on costs and benefits of legal punishment such as the death penalty (Steiker 2005). Every legal punishment has consequences, but the bad consequences should not outweigh good ones. Utilitarianism focuses on the good consequences, and that is why it argued on the point that punishment is meant to deter crime and improve law enforcement (Thomson 2002). What if the punishment causes pain or harm to the victims? The utilitarian grounds is that pain is never good in any punishment. “If punishment involves suffering, it must be justified. The suffering must be outweighed by the good to be achieved by it” (Barbara & Andrew 2019). Utilitarianism also supports alternatives when punishment does not work. This may include psychological counseling and rehabilitation for people involved in crime. As long these activities achieve the desired deterrent effect, which is the main focus on utilitarianism argument. 

The retributive argument differs from the utilitarianism argument because of its view that “legal punishment is intended to make those who are responsible for a crime pay for it”( Barbara & Andrew 2019). This idea gets support from the natural law and deontological perspective that believe in retributive justice and retaliation. In that murderers deserve to be executed, and prison sentences belong only to crimes of theft, drug trafficking, and rape. According to retributive justice, when you harm or cause pain to someone, it will be just when you also made to “suffer similarly or proportionately to the harm or pain you caused to the other person”( Barbara & Andrew 2019). In retributive justice, there are no alternatives to the way we saw in utilitarianism theory. The retributivist stand post is that the punishment given to the victim should fit the crime. So it means retributivists support capital punishment where the death penalty deserves to murderers because they also killed. Retributive justice applies to lex talionis, which means an eye for an eye (Thomson 2002). A consequentialist in utilitarianism theory may believe that the death penalty can deter people from committing the crime of murder. The big argument is how the death penalty is the harshest of sort of legal punishments which cause harm and pain.

Utilitarianism argument differs from the retributive argument on the issue of the death penalty taken as one of capital punishment. Both argue on the bases of moral justification, where utilitarian believe that we have an alternative like long prison sentences rather than the death penalty. On the other side, retributivists believe in lex talionis- an eye for any eye (Thomson 2002). They argue that the death penalty is the best capital and legal punishment for murderers. Legal punishment is a big topic that needs to be part of moral education that will try to give insight into the moral legitimacy of capital punishment (Kadlac 2014). For a society to move forward, it must have a particular set of values and, on the other side, establish punishments that will fit those who undermine the laws and rules. I think punishments are not meant to cause harm or pain but act as deterrents. To “help individuals to internalize social values and giving them internal prohibitions against violating those values” (Barbara & Andrew 2019). Lastly, I may differ with retributivists who support the death penalty as a capital punishment. I support the idea of utilitarianism, where we can have alternatives like long prison sentences rather than capital punishment like the death penalty.

References

Barbara MacKinnon & Andrew Fiala (2019).Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues, 9th edition Cengage Learning.

Block, W. E. (2015). The Death Penalty: Response to Ron Paul. Criminal Justice Ethics, 34(3), 339–349. doi: 10.1080/0731129x.2015.1109786

Kadlac, A. (2014). Flouting the Demands of Justice? Physician Participation in Executions. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 39(5), 505–522. doi: 10.1093/jmp/jhu029

Steiker, C. S. (2005). No, Capital Punishment Is Not Morally Required: Deterrence, Deontology and the Death Penalty. Stan. L. Rev., 58, 751.

Thomson, A. (2002). Critical reasoning in ethics: A practical introduction. Routledge.