Against Capital Punishment Summary

Issues concerning the death penalty have been wrestled with in court as early as 1967. The death penalty, or capital punishment, is the ending of the lives of those thought to be guilty of a crime, mostly murder. The methods used include: lethal injections, electrocution, lethal gas, firing squad, and hanging. Only thirty-two states practice the death penalty. Ernest van den Haag, author of “The Ultimate Punishment: A Defense,” argues for the use of the death penalty. On the other hand, Jack Greenberg, gives reasons opposing the death penalty in his work “Against the American System of Capital Punishment.” There are theories as to why the death penalty is necessary; however, these theories cause controversy. By the deterrence theory, the death …show more content…
The death penalty just makes a moral point by being an example of a severe punishment for a severe crime. Retribution uses government power. In her writing, “Against Retributive Justifications of the Death Penalty,” Sarah Roberts-Cady shares “the appeal to retributive justice is often called a ‘backward look-ing’” (Roberts-Cady 185). Retributive justice is a response to past actions. While it is simple to recognize who deserves punishment, the retribution theory fails to describe what they deserve. Roberts-Cady explains of how others perceive the retribution theory: as an unfair advantage to those who actually followed the rules; these people are fair play theorists. Some retributive theo-rists would agree with “an eye-for-an-eye,” which means that the punishment should be equiva-lent to the crime. If a person kills someone else, he ought to be killed. However, it is impossible to inflict the same exact harm; for example, Hitler committed genocide against millions, but it would not be the same punishment by just killing him. This “law of retaliation” (Roberts-Cady 186) would not work because that would mean that committing an equally horrid crime is moral-ly acceptable, such as: rape. There is no general rule for determining equivalence in punishment and crime. A price tag cannot just be put on a life; therefore, one human’s worth cannot be com-pared to that of another. Roberts-Cady establishes that a crime …show more content…
In the surveys to the general public, when given the alternative of life imprisonment without parole as opposed to the death penalty, the approval rate for the death penalty dropped. The death penalty should be abolished due to its inability to carry out one of its purposes of preventing other crime from oc-curring. In a perfect world, the death penalty would not ensue any racial or geographical bias, and there would be an even-handedness or general way of carrying out this punishment. Howev-er, this nation’s method fails to distribute it equally. The value of a human’s life cannot be meas-ure; consequently, the life’s worth cannot be equated with that of another’s life. If a moratorium is needed to contemplate of ways to better the death penalty to where it could actually stop crime, then so be it. This system of punishment cannot endure if it is not