Arguments Against Capital Punishment In The United States

Capital punishment is a government sanctioned sentence in which a person is put to death from a crime committed. These crimes committed are called capital crimes, which are often crimes such as murder and rape. Capital Punishments prevalence has decreased in the modern era. States globally have shown that most countries have taken an abolitionist stance to capital punishment. The main arguments that centre on the issue of capital punishment is the retributive stance and the utilitarian stance. It is to be a conflict of whether the punishment is an effective deterrent or if it should be done regardless of the consequences. The driving wedge would be respect of human life and what can be done to maintain respect to a human's life. With life,

The issue is that the answers to these questions are supposed to apply to both the victim and the perpetrator.

Natural rights are thought to be the rights that are inherent to human beings (Hart, H. L., 1955). These rights cannot be overridden by a coercive unit such as the state. In such a view violation of these natural rights will require a punishment as a token of justice. If this is true that means that capital punishment would be a person forfeiting a person’s right to live. So again there is the distinction between an innocent life and a guilty party. This is also supported by the fact that the material nature of the world is still mutable so a compensation for injury is possible (Aquinas, 1992).

Theistic views have many views on what value a human being has being given. The Abrahamic faith systems have it that God created each human being with inherent worth derived from the fact that humans are made in God’s image (Fletcher, G. P., 1999). If this view is taken, then it is assumed that the harming of a human being is to violate a person whose worth derives from a divine being. This is a violation of the person’s right and there must be a punishment (Kay, J., 1988). Capital punishment would be also viewed for its own sake when looking through the window of human worth. The after effects are not factored into the discussion from this frame. The argument is deontological

In order for the charge of guilt to brought, there has to be the legally mandated due process. Without a correct due process the efficacy of the judgement is likely to contain error. Information that comes into a case is often not pieced together for a comprehensive sentence. Due to the pressures to come to a judgement swiftly, the judgement could be made prematurely thus sentencing an innocent person to death. A lack of a swift judgement may also weaken the deterrent signal to potential offenders. (Sunstein, C. R., 2005). Putting an innocent to death is a serious matter that renders the sentence as an act of murder according to the concept of inalienable rights. A failure to point out the state’s illegitimacy in such an act is an admission that rights are not inalienable and they are subject to political manipulation. Political manipulation could include the clouding of judgement from social prejudice (Bouckaert, P. N., 1996) and as a means from crushing dissent (Baldus, D. C., et al,