Immanuel Kant's Capital Punishment Analysis

Immanuel Kant is a passionate supporter of capital punishment for murderers. According to Kant "whoever has committed murder, must die”, because regardless of how strenuous life may be, it is much better than death. "However many they may be who have committed a murder, or have even commanded it, or acted as art and part in it, they ought all to suffer death." A court verdict is required before prosecuting a murderer. Kant believes that if a society does not sentence a murderer to death they are an accomplice of said murder.
In Kant's belief the death penalty is acceptable only when the crime concerns murder, unless a crime causes significant harm to a society, such as lese-majesty. It is intolerable to permit a circumstance where a murderer would be allowed to any legal rights or the ability to validate his actions. Kant thinks that we cannot realistically replace the death penalty. If capital …show more content…
While this is a sensible question a different why of thinking about it is, do we have the right to kill people? I agree with much of Kant’s eye for an eye theory, but I find it very troubling that the death penalty in America is defined by error. For every nine people who have been executed we have actually identified one innocent person who has been exonerated and released from death row. I find this astonishing, we would never let people do things like drive in cars if one in every ten cars driven had a fatal crash. Somehow, we are able to tell ourselves it is not our burden. If we are administering the death penalty we should be unquestionably certainty that the accused is guilty. If we can not be one hundred percent sure the accused is guilty they should not be executed or serve life in prison. While the idea of finding out someone I love murdered someone and is now on death row would be difficult to coupe with, finding out someone I love or even myself were innocent and on death row would be