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An empirical view on the death penalty
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I do not support the death penalty in any form.
Most of the arguments I hear that are pro-death penalty ultimately boil to one of two things:
1) The criminal killed/raped/whatever someone else, and so no longer deserves life.
2) The possibility of death is a deterrent to others who might otherwise commit the crime.
However, there are too many cases of people on death row getting posthumously deemed innocent of the crime they were killed for to make the first argument anything but specious.
The reason Illinois currently has a moratorium on the death penalty isn't because the governor thinks that murderers deserve life; its because new evidence (e.g. DNA evidence) has come into the scene since the initial trial that exonerates the defendant. These cases are numerous enough to prove that it is not a statistical anomaly -- indeed, too often will a jury trial find an innocent person guilty.
This is not to say that everyone on death row is innocent; however, a sentence of life in prison can be 'escaped' from if new evidence comes out exonerating someone. Death, on the other hand, is permanent. Even if they were the most innocent person on the planet, once someone is dead they cannot be freed from their punishment.
Indeed, in my mind a SINGLE person killed needlessly is enough to ruin any chance of the death penalty being a just punishment in my mind. It is too permanent with not enough chance for redemption if the person they thought was guilty turns out later to be innocent.
The second reason (the deterrent policy) is even worse, in my view. Not only is the data on whether or not it is a deterrent sketchy at best, but EVEN IF WE ASSUME IT IS A DETERRENT, it will not affect that many people - the people that kill in a fit of passion or that kill pre-meditatively will not be dissuaded. I think a life sentence will do as much for that as killing.
Furthermore, one of the *BEST* arguments for the deterrent policy is that even if ONE innocent life is saved, it is worth it to keep the policy. You can see my first argument for why this falls apart; because there have been proven to be people killed through the death penalty that were innocent, whereas the deterrent policy is a mixed bag. Therefore, this argument is actually best used in opposing the death penalty, not in supporting it.
This does not even take into account the huge cost of the death penalty in the appeals process, etc. It takes up a huge amount of taxpayer time and money compared to life in prison.
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A more philosophical view on the death penalty
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(this part of the post will assume basic knowledge of Locke, or at least the basic theories behind social contract-based government)
The political system behind American Democracy is based on the idea of a social contract. If we take this contract to be tacitly approved in the act of living in america [note: this isn't how I actually think about the world, I am much more of a Nietszchean when you get down to it], then this contract means several things.
First, the social contract of Locke demands that no being have the right to take away another's life, health, freedom, property, and such. If this happens, then society needs to come in and punish them. However, in his view the society also has the requirement to guarantee these for EVERYONE in the society.
If the death penalty exists, then the society is basically eliminating the criminal from the society. The society is saying that not only did you break the rules we laid down, but you did it in such a way that you will *never* be allowed back in this society. In the process of doing this, the society is de facto approving of that person's methods, and this legitimizes them. In taking a life for a life, the society is admitting that taking a life can be okay, which removes any sort of authority the society had over that individual.
If the society does not have the death penalty, then the society is saying "you killed; however, we are not going to legitimize that through the taking of your life. Rather, we are going to hold ourselves to a higher standard and only take away your freedom." It simultaneously punishes and makes itself seem 'higher' than the one it is punishing.
If our government were based on the Hobbes' model of the Social Contract, on the other hand, the death penalty would be A-OK. Then again, so would the murder. So I guess it's all in how you look at it.
