Incentive to help police

Plea bargaining is used in most countries. It's the process through which a criminal gets a reduced sentence in exchange for providing help to the police.

Where the possible sentence is death, the prisoner has the strongest possible incentive to try to get their sentence reduced, even to life imprisonment without possibility of parole, and it's argued that capital punishment therefore gives a useful tool to the police.

This is a very feeble justification for capital punishment, and is rather similar to arguments that torture is justified because it would be a useful police tool.

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A Japanese argument

This is a rather quirky argument, and not normally put forward.

Japan uses the death penalty sparingly, executing approximately 3 prisoners per year.

A unique justification for keeping capital punishment has been put forward by some Japanese psychologists who argue that it has an important psychological part to play in the life of the Japanese, who live under severe stress and pressure in the workplace.

The argument goes that the death penalty reinforces the belief that bad things happen to those who deserve it. This reinforces the contrary belief; that good things will happen to those who are 'good'.

In this way, the existence of capital punishment provides a psychological release from conformity and overwork by reinforcing the hope that there will be a reward in due time.

Oddly, this argument seems to be backed up by Japanese public opinion. Those who are in favour currently comprise 81% of the population, or that is the official statistic. Nonetheless there is also a small but increasingly vociferous abolitionist movement in Japan.

From an ethical point of view this is the totallyconsequentialist argument that if executing a few people will lead to an aggregate increase in happiness then that is a good thing.

Arguments Against Capital Punishment

Value of human life

Everyone thinks human life is valuable. Some of those against capital punishment believe that human life is so valuable that even the worst murderers should not be deprived of the value of their lives.

They believe that the value of the offender's life cannot be destroyed by the offender's bad conduct - even if they have killed someone.

Some abolitionists don't go that far. They say that life should be preserved unless there is a very good reason not to, and that the those who are in favour of capital punishment are the ones who have to justify their position.

Right to live

Everyone has an inalienable human right to life, even those who commit murder; sentencing a person to death and executing them violates that right.

This is very similar to the 'value of life' argument, but approached from the perspective of human rights.

The counter-argument is that a person can, by their actions, forfeit human rights, and that murderers forfeit their right to life.

Another example will make this clear - a person forfeits their right to life if they start a murderous attack and the only way the victim can save their own life is by killing the attacker.

The medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas made this point very clearly:

Therefore if any man is dangerous to the community and is subverting it by some sin, the treatment to be commended is his execution in order to preserve the common good... Therefore to kill a man who retains his natural worthiness is intrinsically evil, although it may be justifiable to kill a sinner just as it is to kill a beast, for, as Aristotle points out, an evil man is worse than a beast and more harmful.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae

Aquinas is saying that certain contexts change a bad act (killing) into a good act (killing to repair the violation of justice done by the person killed, and killing a person who has forfeited their natural worthiness by killing).

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Execution of the innocent

The most common and most cogent argument against capital punishment is that sooner or later, innocent people will get killed, because of mistakes or flaws in the justice system.

Witnesses, (where they are part of the process), prosecutors and jurors can all make mistakes. When this is coupled with flaws in the system it is inevitable that innocent people will be convicted of crimes. Where capital punishment is used such mistakes cannot be put right.

The death penalty legitimizes an irreversible act of violence by the state and will inevitably claim innocent victims. As long as human justice remains fallible, the risk of executing the innocent can never be eliminated

Amnesty International

There is ample evidence that such mistakes are possible: in the USA, 130 people sentenced to death have been found innocent since 1973 and released from death row. Source: Amnesty

The average time on death row before these exonerations was 11 years. Source: Death Penalty Information Center

Things were made worse in the USA when the Supreme Court refused to hold explicitly that the execution of a defendant in the face of significant evidence of innocence would be unconstitutional [Herrera v. Collins, 560 U.S. 390 (1993)]. However many US lawyers believe that in practice the court would not permit an execution in a case demonstrating persuasive evidence of "actual innocence".

The continuous threat of execution makes the ordeal of those wrongly convicted particularly horrible.

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Retribution is wrong

Many people believe that retribution is morally flawed and problematic in concept and practice.

We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing.

U.S. Catholic Conference

To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, it is not justice.

Attributed to Archbishop Desmond Tutu