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In the article Yes, the Death Penalty Is Morally Permissible by Louis P. Pojman he argues hat there are moral reasons to give the death penalty to 1 st degree murders. He also gives two arguments, retributivist and abolitionist. The retributivist argument is everybody has to live.
If a criminal kills a victim, the criminal should be punished by death. But, the abolitionist response is putting the criminal to death only compounds evil by having the victim dead already and giving the criminal the death penalty would only double the evil. Pojman also states that the abolitionist is wrong, the state or government does not violate the rights of the criminal. He states that the criminals right was already given up by murdering. Also, if death penalty is an evil it can be justified by being a lesser of the murder that the criminal imposed. The author gives his objections against the death penalty.
He states that capital punishment is morally unacceptable thirst for revenge; he means that someone should not be punished out of revenge of what the criminal did. In his second objection he states that innocent people may be put to death by convicting a wrong person. We cannot compensate the death. His third objective is that capital punishment denies a criminal dignity as a human being. Lois Pojman is against capital punishment. In the second article On Deterrence and the Death Penalty, Ernest van den Haag explains why capital punishment can be justified on deterrence.
He explains that people don t do crimes on the basis that they might get caught and are scared of the punishment that might be given to them. He also explains that capital punishment is unjust because it may lead to the execution of the innocent. The penalty of capital punishment can t be reversed. Also poor people who are found guilty are more likely to be executed then the rich. Den Haag also explain that poverty is not a cause of crime. Ernest Van den Haag ends by saying we should retain capital punishment because we have no right to risk additional future victims of murder for the sake of sparing the convicted murderers.
In the reading Metaphysics of Morals by Im manual Kant, he explains that criminals deserve to suffer for their own good not for the good of the society. This means that criminals should not be punished to make a point or to scare would be criminals from committing murder. Thurgood Marshall opinion in court case Gregg vs. Georgia is that the death penalty is constitutionally invalid because it is excessive and it is morally unacceptable. He proves that there is no proof that capital punishment deters people from murder. Also that capital punishment violates the eight and fourteen amendments (cruel and unusual punishment and no one be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process, respectively).
My opinions on the articles are that they all make really good points. I think we should abolish the death penalty unless the crime is real serious. In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing and the debate over Timothy Movies, I think for the victims to get over what he did and put it behind them, I think he should be executed.
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Research essay sample on Ernest Van Den Haag Morally Unacceptable
