In this article, I will talk about the death penalty and the arguments for it. Later, I will refute those arguments and explain why we should oppose them with statistics. Let us start. By definition, the death penalty is the execution of an individual by the state for a crime he/she has committed and an end to the right to life.
Let's start with some of the common arguments used by those who want the death penalty.
1. Society gets rid of those who threaten it.
This is not true. Because the death penalty is a singular punishment, by eliminating someone who has committed a certain crime, you cannot eliminate the people who have committed and have the potential to commit that crime. Besides, the death penalty can encourage people with the potential to commit this crime. Other followers of the ideology that motivates an individual to commit a certain crime may increase their self-confidence. They may think they are on the right track. For example, they can claim that the person executed was a martyr and precipitate the crime. Also, in support of what I said last, the data clearly show that the death penalty does not deter crime but that society's brutal side is exposed. In 2004 in the USA, the average murder rate for states that used the death penalty was 5.71 per 100,000 of the population as against 4.02 per 100,000 in states that did not use it. As you can see in the graph below, the homicide ratio does not rise and fall steadily because there are too many variables besides the death penalty. Therefore, it cannot be demonstrated that the death penalty reduces the homicide rate.
1. If you kill someone else, you do not deserve to live
This is a logical fallacy. Everyone has the right to life. To deprive an individual of the right to life for killing another individual is revenge, not justice. In other words, societies that execute criminals commit the same crime that they condemn.
2. Victims and their families have a right to justice
As I said before. This is not justice, and it is revenge. The two are different because human rights apply to everyone from the worst to the best.
This will not comfort anyone, and it will only extend the pain to the executed prisoner's family.
3. The society is not obliged to keep people who have committed grave crimes alive even in prisons with their taxes.
This is a prevalent and erroneous argument. A method of execution can never be mentioned with adjectives such as humanoid or fair. However, the world has changed, and traditional methods of execution are a thing of the past. Modern execution methods used today are very, very expensive. According to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, July 1, 2008: The Commission estimates the annual costs ($ 137 million per year) of the current system, which is the current system after implementing the reforms. It is estimated as a system ($ 11 million a year) that imposes a maximum life sentence instead of the death penalty.
All studies have shown that the death penalty is much more expensive than life imprisonment. Of course, the only cost here is not the method to be used for the death penalty. If the costs of capital punishment were to be measured at the time of execution, that might indeed be true. However, as every prosecutor, attorney, and judge knows, a capital case's prices begin long before the sentence is disbursed. Experienced prosecutors and defense attorneys must be assigned and start an extended period of investigation and pre-trial hearings. Jury selection, the trial itself, and initial appeals will consume years of your time and large amounts of cash before execution is on the horizon.
So, from a libertarian point of view, are we really going to allow the state to use this high amount of money earned from taxes to take away one of the most fundamental rights of another individual, the right to life?
Amnesty.org. 2020. Available at: <https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/48000/act500062008en.pdf>
Digitalcommons.law.scu.edu. 2020. Available at: <https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=ncippubs>
Donohue, J. and Wolfers, J., 2020. Users.nber.org. Available at: <http://users.nber.org/~jwolfers/papers/DeathPenalty(SLR).pdf>