Countless Arguments Over The Morality Of The Death Penalty

Countless arguments over the morality of the death penalty have been made throughout the years. When it comes to the death penalty, we have two groups. The abolitionists, who argue that we should abolish the death penalty. And the retentionists, those who argue to retain the death penalty. These arguments cover everything from the sanctity of a human’s life, to whether or not we even need the death penalty. Some arguments end up being irrelevant to the actual morality of the death penalty itself, or are simply impossible to answer definitively. We certainly will not be able to cover every argument here, or even most of them. Instead, we will try to see why we should keep the death penalty by looking at possible fallacies in otherwise impeccable sounding arguments against it. The first argument against the use of the death penalty that feels important to address is presented by Hugo Adam Bedau, who proposed the “Minimal invasion argument against the death penalty (Vaughn pp.333).” This argument, broken down to its core components, says

It’s reasonable to assume that less civilized societies would have a smaller list of unacceptable punishments, while more civilized societies would have longer lists. However, this rule, or idea can only hold to a certain point. As long as there is a chance of a human committing a crime, there will have to be punishments that are allowed. If we say that the death penalty is not allowed, then, logically, next would follow either life sentences, or perhaps solitary confinement. We know that list has to stop growing at some point. This point of stagnation should be at a place where adding anything else to the list would start making punishments not equal, or not suitable for the crime. And again, until we can agree, without a doubt, that life sentences are a suitable punishment for first degree murder, we need to keep the death penalty off of this list of unallowable