The Ethical Case Against the Death Penalty
There are a number of arguments that have been used to challenge the death penalty. For example, many have argued that the criminal justice system is flawed by biases and other errors of judgement. Due to this fact, innocent people have been put to death in the past.
According to one study, 4% of those sentenced to death are wrongfully convicted.
Since humans are prone to bias, and because mistakes can be made, more people will undoubtedly be executed for crimes they did not commit in the future.
Opponents of the death penalty have also pointed out that there is racial bias in capital punishment sentencing, and that there is no definitive evidence to support the hypothesis that the death penalty is a more effective deterrent than non-lethal options.
These arguments, like those that appeal to the comparable costs between capital punishment and life-long imprisonment, are largely pragmatic arguments — that is, they show that there are problems associated with using capital punishment, rather than showing why it should not be considered as an option on ethical grounds (even if there were no problems involved in its administration).
In this article, I will focus on what I find to be the most compelling ethical arguments against the death penalty . These arguments appeal to…
