The Argument Of Jeffery Reiman's View On The Death Penalty

Today I am going to go into the argument of Jeffery Reiman and his view on the death penalty. Then I’ll give an objection from Louis Pojman’s side and then my thoughts on what Reiman’s rebuttal would be. After that I will decide whether or not Reiman has a strong argument. In this paper I’m not looking at the end argument, but what the author gives as evidence. To start off I will look at Reiman’s argument.

Reiman goes against what Pojman states in his argument of commonsense. Reiman states that there already risk doing any crime. There also is a fear plateau that will act as a deterrence that will keep people from committing any crimes that involve the death penalty. He states that killing the murders will cause overkilling and also it …show more content…
What people (including potential criminals) fear more will have a greater deterrent effect on them. People (including potential criminals) fear death more than they do any other humane punishment. The death penalty is a humane punishment. Therefore, people (including criminals) will be deterred more by the death penalty than by any other humane punishment. The death penalty will save innocent lives. It’s the killer vs. the innocent person idea. The death penalty is the greatest deterrent on people. Therefore people aren’t going to want to commit a crime such as killing someone else if they are going to die. This is the strongest punishment on someone and this has a bigger effect on someone than life in prison. The idea with the fear plateau is that people who are committing these crimes are already past the feat plateau and aren’t being deterred by life in prison. Reiman’s idea that there is this fear plateau doesn’t work for people who are going to be committing these crimes. The death penalty is something that will deter a lot of people according to Pojman. With the death penalty being on the table there won’t be as many crimes. There is the idea from people who have the death penalty on the table by killing them it will save a lot of innocent lives. These killers are most likely going to kill again, so to place the bet on some innocent life is the right choice. In the long run we are saving a number of people rather than one …show more content…
Reiman goes into detail that comparing deterrent impact versus life imprisonment and the death penalty shows that there is no difference in deterrent impact between the death penalty and life imprisonment. If life imprisonment is the same as the death penalty then why have the death penalty at all? It’s not worth killing someone else over something that is proven not to work in the study that shows life sentencing is the same as the death penalty. My argument itself is talking about common people within a certain normally experienced range. Reiman is not talking about crazy killers. This fear plateau is for common sense people like you and I that are going to go kill someone. Pojman argument that killers are above this range is correct, but this is not the people I am talking about in my article. Killing is killing, no matter on who does it. The argument on the best bet is the better choice is the human being. Well isn’t the killer a human being. He has rights to his life also. You are throwing him away and stating that there is nothing to do for him. There is a lot of reasons one would kill. He might not be in the right state or is someone trying to protect their family in self-defense. The government is also being a hypocrite by stating it is okay for us to kill, but not for everyone else. Why is it okay for them? Who gave them rights? Yes, this is the government, but we also live a