The Death Penalty for People that Kill Other People - Case Study Example

The question of whether or not we should or ought to do something necessitates a large degree of normative analysis in its response. By normative analysis, we mean pertaining not to the facts of the situation, not how the world is, but how we should act in relation to the facts out there in the world. In the case of capital punishment, colloquially known as the “death penalty”, normative analysis is the only course possible when discussing whether it is indeed necessary or by some standards “cruel” or “inhumane”. The problem the discussants face when encountering the topic of capital punishment often involves distinctly different underlying philosophic assumptions, which lie either in the metaethical analysis or the normative theory on which they are basing their claims. It makes as much sense to discuss an applied issue like the death penalty while ignoring the underlying philosophic principles as trying to build an edifice from the top to the bottom. What these discussions need are fundamental structures in place from which the discussion can progress and have context. Normative systems are customarily divided between deontological and teleological systems. The former refers to systems constructed on absolute, unchangeable laws that dictate how one must act in all circumstances, regardless of the shifting variables which cause complications. The latter refers to systems based on the consequences of the action being considered: whether it gives rise to good or bad effects in the long run dictates whether the action itself is morally admissible or not (MacDonald and Beck-Dudley). The following perspective on the death penalty is based on neither. Deontologists and teleologists have given their arguments for and against in the issue for decades, never reaching a consensus because they fail to address the more fundamental issues involved, such as the nature of punishment, the nature of a human life, and the nature of human rights. The following natural rights perspective, taken in part from the British philosopher John Locke, holds that the death penalty is justifiable in terms of each individual human being’s right to life—the right not to be interfered with or used as someone else’s means. A murderer violates his victim’s right to life under these conditions. Seeing as murder, under the natural rights framework, is the most heinous crime that an individual can commit, such penalties ought to be mandatory with very broad conditions. Firstly, in an attempt to define these terms, we must acknowledge that the very concept of “natural rights” has been shrouded in mystery by virtue of its overuse. Going back to the philosopher John Locke’s seminal Second Treatise of Government, we derive the simple fact that natural rights exist from what is necessary for a human life: life itself (or reversely, not being dead), liberty (to be able to set and pursue one’s ends), and property (the means by which achieves those ends). The natural rights Locke derives come from his claim that “…reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions” (9). Locke comes to the conclusion that these rights exist even in the so-called “statue of nature”, a condition in which there is no government. Hence, natural rights are independent, or not contingent upon, the particular beliefs, laws, or customs of any given society. Often, it is claimed that natural rights are grounded in a so-called natural law, which is the actual basis of the ethical theory being utilized here. The natural law is a law determined by nature and is therefore universal in its application. Aristotle, in discussing the topic of rhetoric, suggests that when debate stalls, we appeal to a law common to all states, even when those states’ particular, positive laws contradict one another (Aristotle 98). It is with the hope that Aristotle was correct in his suggestion that we turn to something transcending the particular laws of the United States, the Western world, the Eastern world, or the Third World to try to discover the truth. Only a normative theory which applies everywhere and always can truly put an end to the debate, and it shall be instructive to discover where such a theory leads us. From John Locke’s discussion of natural rights, we learn that they are, by nature, inalienable. However, this does not mean that the murderer retains his right to life (or not to be killed) after he committed his heinous act and therefore cannot receive the ultimate punishment for it. In his chapter “Of the State of War”, Locke speaks on when we have the right to retaliate against an aggressor. When an aggressor aggresses against us, either against our life, liberty, or possessions, he has made his own rights not subject to violation. He says, “He who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him” (14). When an aggressor violates a person’s rights, it is absurd to say that the victim’s response is a violation of his rights. As a thief steals his victim’s possessions (and his rights to those objects), it is rightly absurd to say that the victim is violating his rights as he takes them back or as he takes property of his attacker equal in value. The same applies in the case of the natural right to life: when an aggressor takes a life, it is absurd to think that, after the violator has taken away another’s right to life, that he has not in some way kept his own right to life from being inviolable. John Locke sheds light on the specifics of the right we retain for self-defense in the event that our natural rights are violated, saying, “To this strange doctrine, viz. That in the state of nature every one has the executive power of the law of nature” (12). In other words, in the absence of a government responsible for enforcing positive laws (which are based on the laws of nature and our natural rights), each person has the complete right to act as his own enforcer of the law of nature. As a result, the power of self-defense is entirely person A’s, justified by the fact that his rights are inalienable, even while being violable if he decides to aggress against another. When a governing body enters the equation, and takes as a monopoly the right to enforce positive law, it is its responsibility to apply proportionate and just responses to aggressions against rights in the state in the interest of protecting individual rights. As the most heinous crime in the natural rights framework, the crime of murder deserves the harshest response from the state. Teleologists and deontologists have had their say on the nature of punishment and its justification. Deontologists, of course, tend to favor the theory of retributivism, which consists of two claims: (1) that the innocent not be punished, and (2) that the guilty be punished (Alexander and Moore). These claims are taken as sufficient for the theory, and that retribution is the primary, if not only, final goal of the punishment. They take these two facts as rule-ordered dictates and to be universally applied in all circumstances. Teleologists (otherwise known as utilitarians) take the justification of punishment to be deterrence. In the case of the death penalty, the utilitarian would anticipate the advent of a strict death penalty to deter further murders and consequently result in positive consequences for societies as a whole. Nevertheless, studies reveal that the deterrence provided by the death penalty is not enough to justify its practice (Bailey). The natural rights framework does not seek punishment as an end in itself, but as a means to a higher value: the affirmation of a victim’s (and that of his or her family, society, and culture) right to life as an irreducible fact of nature. The natural rights theory of punishment might consist of the following: natural rights, being essentially negative rights, do not impose obligations on anyone. But under the Lockean social contract theory, there are positive rights that individual citizens retain by organizing and supporting, through contract, a governing body entrusted with enforcing law. Because citizens have positive rights, and are able to do so because they have the negative rights to life, liberty, and property (all of which are protected by that government), the government’s enforcement of laws is answerable to the citizenry. The obligation that a government has to its people is being the objective law enforcer and taking that right away from individuals, who might use it to enforce their own subjectively-given laws. As a result, the government must morally enforce the laws that individuals would in the state of nature. In the state of nature, a person’s response to another’s aggression is the only way he or she can uphold his natural rights, which, if violated will ultimately lead to his or her death. Hence, on the natural rights view, punishment is a matter of self-defense in response to the violation of rights, and morally compulsory in such cases. The natural rights approach to punishment is strongly tied into an approach which is centered on the concept of restitution, which disciplines the rights-offender by making him or her compensate the victim with something of equal or greater value. Thus, if an aggressor were to steal a sum of money, X, from his victim, a court might instead of ordering him to ten years in prison order him to compensate the victim with a sum of 2X, for time lost, inconvenience, and court costs. Randy Barnett, in calling for a new “paradigm of criminal justice” argues that restitution as the proper end of punishment is justified on the so-called principle of “equality of justice”, which “calls for equal enforcement of each victim’s right to restitution” (Barnett 299). The principle says: “Even if necessary or expedient, any lessening of payment to the victim because of the qualities of the criminal is a violation of that victim’s rights and an inequality of justice” (Barnett 299). Notice the use of the word “rights”, which is left vague in this context. People often think of “restitution” in the context of financial matters, like in the previously given example of the thief repaying his victim. Hence, applying the principle of equality of justice to our natural right to property is quite straightforward. However, the prospect of doing so to our rights to life might not be. Applying restitution in the case of a violation of the right to life is especially unclear, since it relies on the notion of compensating a dead person for his or her loss. When the person is dead, restitution cannot take the form of any material repayment: it must come in a matter of principle, respect, and justice. Putting the aggressor to death affirms the victim’s right to life in a form of restitution which satisfies the victim, his family, and his society in principle and in a satisfactory way. Under the current system, victims are forgotten and murderers occupy news headlines, often punishing the victim’s legacy further. It is a society’s self-defense against murder which is at stake, the most heinous of crimes. Before continuing and anticipating some objections, it may be best to understand what this view does not hope to accomplish. There are numerous arguments that have been put forward in favor of the death penalty, all of which have almost completely failed. Arguments that appeal to deterrence, economics, and religion are all equally ineffective in providing any kind of basis for the continued practice. Additionally, the natural rights view does not provide a basis for the alleged “right” of family and loved ones of victims to see the perpetrator die for his crimes. There is no such “right”, even if the government allows witnesses to the execution. Seeing a person die is not designed to “prove that there is justice” or to “console” those related to the victim. Retribution, any rational person should admit, is not a valid justification for punishment: it is barbaric, sensational, animalistic, and useless. Restitution is the only valid means of justifying any kind of punishment, and the natural rights approach to the death penalty is the only consistent application of restitution to violations of the natural right to life (Barnett). The first objection to the view that there should mandatory sentences of capital punishment on all cases of first-, second-, and third-degree murders is that a more severe punishment for the perpetrator is life without parole. They base this argument on the thought that a life spent without freedom is worse than death (Vogel). This, however, makes no objection at all: the natural rights view is independent of all feelings, thoughts, and wants of human beings. It is based on principle: the principle that the victim’s right to life needs to be affirmed. A sentence of life without parole affirms the murderer’s right to life by not imposing on him a death sentence. Restitution demands of us to take appropriate and proportional action in response to an aggression, and giving life without parole undermines this. Some human beings are, by nature, predisposed to kill other beings, and are beyond all hopes of rehabilitation (Gibbs). They pose a significant threat to their potential victims in prisons. If we are morally compelled to kill dangerous sentient animals, why are we not compelled to do so to inherently dangerous and murderous rational animals? On this point, the humanitarian response to be anticipated is that all human life is valuable, even those who are on death row. But this claim rests on the presumption that human life can be valuable despite of the fact that the particular human life we are referring to (that of the murderer) is inimical to real values that other people have. In fact, a murderer’s life is, by its essence, opposed to the value of human life given his or her tendency to destroy it. So to launch the claim that putting murderers to death for their crimes is wrong because all human life contains at least some value relies on two faulty assumptions: (1) that things can have values independently from a rational evaluation, and (2) that things can have the same value as those things that they tend to destroy or have before destroyed. Human beings retain their value as human beings only insofar as they have natural rights as a result of being human. However, in the event that they essentially make their own rights not subject to any possible violation (such as when they murder, steal, or enslave), then they quite nearly lose all their value to anyone else. Another commonly made objection to the death penalty in general is that it is inherently racist; that is, that capital punishment either directly or indirectly targets members of minority groups more predisposed to violent crime. Findings from organizations like the ACLU and NAACP estimate that almost 42% of death row inmates are African-American, which, considered next to the fact that only 13% of the population is Black, suggests some amount of prejudice inherent in the criminal justice system (Tucker). These suspicions raise the question of whether Blacks are inordinately targeted for execution by racist whites as a means of thinning the opposing demographic (Unnever and Cullen). A survey of Black college students compared with White students found that the former were far more likely to express strong opposition to the practice. The latter category was found more likely to express support of the practice (Baker, Lambert and Jenkins 208). It does seem as though the issue is a racially polarizing one, given the historical background of the use of death in the sociopolitical history of the United States (Messner, Baller and Zevenbergen). However, the natural rights view is inherently anti-racist. Remembering that it makes no claims or assumptions about the nature of the criminal justice system (and whether it is indeed prejudiced or not), the natural rights view tells us to indiscriminately impose death sentences on all murderers, independent of race, class, or gender. These superficial differences mean nothing, especially when, paraphrasing the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, any weakling with a gun can commit a murder. It should also be remembered that the natural rights view is inherently individualistic: it means that each individual human being is entitled to his or her own rights. Thus, individuals are accountable for their own morally good or morally evil actions, and the only racism attached to this view is if we contradicted this assumption by considering African-Americans as a “race” and not as a collection of individuals. Individuals are responsible for the consequences of their own actions, regardless of superficial differences. Given this thought, the racist objection to the death penalty is not an objection to the view being presented here, but with how the practice is carried out under the current system, within the current social climate. Another objection on the natural rights view is whether it is explanatorily adequate enough to justify the death penalty in all cases of murder, whether they are of the first-, second-, or third-degree. And, of course, this objection is valid, which leads to a caveat on the application of this theory of punishment. Rightly, self-defense is a case of murder which cannot be punished under any circumstances. It is simply a case of a potential victim acting proactively against an imminent and clear danger to his or her person. The natural rights view does not apply to cases in which the murderer was impaired by some chemical influence at the time of the crime or is permanently handicapped in his or her mental functioning. If either of these two happens to be the case, then the condition that the aggressor must be aggressing in a purposive, rational manner is not satisfied and the aggressor shall be punished in a less assertive fashion. Additionally, the distinction between murder and manslaughter shall be respected as the difference between a mens rea and a non-mens rea slaying. While a murder contains some degree of intent or malice aforethought, manslaughter is a sentence carried out with a lower level of criminal culpability. It should not be the expectation of a natural rights theorist, in the context of a discussion on punishment, to believe that someone convicted of manslaughter must also be put to death (Farrier). By taking a novel perspective on the issue of capital punishment, a discussant is allowed to bypass the meaningless applied issues and establish a viewpoint from a more normative level. In addition to this ethical theory, we discuss a matter of political philosophy: the nature of and justification for punishment. On this level, we conclude that restitution is the only proper way to defend any kind of punishment, whether it involves a “slap on the wrist” or a death sentence. From the level of normative analysis, we took a natural rights framework and applied it to the situation at hand and found that indeed capital punishment, in all cases of conscious murder ought to be punishable by death, and to achieve two primary ends: (1) to affirm the right to life of victims, families, and societies, and (2) to uphold the principle of equality of justice which compels us to exercise proper discretion in handing out proportional and just sentences for rights-offenders. It is the government’s responsibility to enforce its laws just as individuals would enforce them in the state of nature, and to apply the rule of self-defense to a social level. Additionally, applying the death penalty in all cases is a matter of proper restitution. Applying the principle of restitution to the right to life is found to be just as easy as the typical case for the right to property and the right to retain any property stolen. Restituting a victim for a loss of life is not merely a matter of practicality, but a matter of principle and of an affirmation of the most basic natural right that all human beings are entitled to. Only by adopting these views on punishment and life can we learn to respect the real value of life and disrespect that which is inimical to that value. Works Cited Alexander, Larry and Michael Moore. Deontological Ethics. 21 November 2007. 25 February 2009 . Aristotle. Rhetoric. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. New York: Dover Publications, 2004. Bailey, William C. "Some further evidence on imprisonment vs. the death penalty as a deterrent to murder." Law and Human Behavior 2:3 (1978): 245-260. Baker, David N., Eric G. Lambert and Morris Jenkins. "Racial Differences in Death Penalty Support and Opposition: A Preliminary Study of White and Black College Students." Journal of Black Studies 35:4 (2005): 201-224. Barnett, Randy E. "Restitution: A New Paradigm of Criminal Justice." Ethics 87:4 (1977): 279-301. Farrier, M. D. "The Distinction between Murder and Manslaughter in Its Procedural Context." The Modern Law Review 39:4 (1976): 414-431. Gibbs, Jack P. "The Death Penalty, Retribution and Penal Policy." The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-) 69:3 (1978): 291-299. Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1980. MacDonald, James E. and Caryn L. Beck-Dudley. "Are Deontology and Teleology Mutually Exclusive?" Journal of Business Ethics 13:8 (1994): 615-623. Messner, Steven F., Robert D. Baller and Matthew P. Zevenbergen. "The Legacy of Lynching and Southern Homicide." American Sociological Review 70:4 (2005): 633-655. Tucker, William. Crime, race and capital punishment. 20 May 2002. 26 February 2009 . Unnever, James D. and Francis T. Cullen. "The Racial Divide in Support for the Death Penalty: Does White Racism Matter?" Social Forces 85:3 (2007): 1281-1301. Vogel, Brenda L. "Support for life in prison without the possibility of parole among death penalty proponents." American Journal of Criminal Justice 27:2 (2003): 263-275. Read More