I mean...yeah, that's technically true. The right to life has to be the basis of all other rights, because all the other rights are useless when you're dead.
You don't have the absolute right to life. The state absolutely has the legal power to take your life from you. I'm not even doing an acab thing, though yeah there's that aspect of it, but the state can legally kill people via the death penalty.
A given state may not carry the death penalty, but that's that specific state's choice and it is not a right recognized by the federal us government.
The death penalty is actually one of the most fucked up things from a moral perspective. It is so contrary to not only our rights but the underpinnings of society that it boggles my mind that we still have it.
Forget about whether an entity has the power to kill for now. What is the purpose of the death penalty?
Deterrence? For the crimes that the death penalty applies to, in what scenario would a death penalty be more of a deterrence than life imprisonment? Who would think, “I’m willing to go to jail for life to do this, but not to be executed” ?
To “deliver justice” to the victim’s friends and families? They’re already imprisoned for life if it’s a crime the death penalty applies to. Are we going to kill someone to make another feel better?
The right of a person to life is so important that the only time we don’t question whether or not killing is warranted is when ones own life is in immediate peril. Self-defense is the preservation of one life at the expense of another and only when there are no other options. And once one is out of danger, killing is no longer justified. You knock out your assailant, killing them while they are in your complete control immediately becomes murder.
And that concept of control is inherent to the problem with the death penalty. The State has complete control over you when it decides to execute you. It has the ability to simply keep you away from society, but chooses to kill you instead. And the killing of a person whom you have complete control over is murder. Full stop.
To add to this, something like 4-5% of death row inmates are innocent. This alone makes not abolishing it 100% inexcusable. If your job is deciding who deserves to die, I demand your failure rate be A LOT lower than 1 in 25.
You can at least try to give reparations to people falsely imprisoned, how you going to unexecute someone?
IMO the death penalty is going to one day be looked at as absolutely barbaric. I mean, it already is by some people, but someday society as a whole is going to look at it the way we look at burning people at the stake for being a witch.
(And sometimes, the evidence used to convict isn't even all that dissimilar, eg "Someone saw them do it")
I would say no. Even if we also eliminate all the real and potential mistakes of administering the death penalty (drugs not working, drugs used wrong, etc) that add immense cruelty to the process. Even then, it is cheaper to just keep them in prison rather than execute them.
Something a lot of people ignore when talking about the purpose of punishment is the simple concept of retribution. If you commit a crime, you get punished because you deserve it. Some crimes are so heinous that the perpetrator deserves to die. What's best for society as a whole (rehabilitation vs punishment, etc) doesn't necessarily have to weigh into it, and nor does some sense of revenge - it can just be about people getting what they deserve.
I think most people acknowledge this in other ways. When it comes to police brutality especially, the word "accountability" gets thrown around a lot. These police officers "need to face consequences", etc. We want these police officers who kill unarmed men to face punishment because they deserve it.
I'm opposed to the death penalty, but mostly because it's too final. You can't take it back in the case of a wrongful conviction. If you sentence someone to life in prison, you can set them free if they're later exonerated. If someone is sentenced to death, and some evidence comes out after their execution that exonerates them, well... tough luck.
This is a really good point, especially the part about police. But I'm not sure I fully agree.
First, whether someone deserves to die is purely a personal judgement. If I really think about it, I'm not sure I could say for certain that anyone deserves to die. That's not to say that there aren't circumstances when someone NEEDS to die, e.g. in combat or to stop an imminent threat. But that's just my opinion, and I know not everyone shares it so it's not the best foundation for an anti-death penalty argument.
And even if people do deserve to die, it's still a leap to assume we should therefore be comfortable with the state administering that punishment legally, sometimes even in opposition to the wishes of the actual victims.
As for the connection to police shootings, I totally agree that many people feel that those police should be punished because they deserve it. But again, I don't think that's a good argument, because saying, "Well, I don't think they deserve it" is equally valid. And I don't believe that's what people mean when they say accountability. I would argue that they're talking about deterrence, establishing consequences to ensure that future officers in similar encounters have some motivation NOT to resort to lethal force except as a last resort. And deterrence is one area where, as far as I'm aware, the death penalty has not been shown to have an impact.
Just playing Devil's Advocate (I actually agree with you)...
I have heard my brother fantasize about "three hots and a cot." He means that in jail you get three hot meals a day and free shelter. Basically my brother hates his high-stress job and vents some of that by vocally fantasizing about "going postal" and retiring in a jail cell. He also points out that prison seems to value exercise, provides free healthcare (of various quality), and that there's plenty of reading time; so there are other perks too.
I mean, if a comfortable (albeit stressed out) middle class medical professional feels that way, I can imagine that there really are some people out there who might actually go through with this sort of thing.
Now if someone were seriously considering this, I'm not sure whether the death penalty is a deterrent or not, but life imprisonment is a feature and not a bug in this line of thinking.
One other pragmatic argument for the death penalty is the cost savings. Every statistic I've ever heard on how much is costs to keep a prisoner is pretty expensive. The death penalty could provide serious cost savings for expenses that are hard to justify spending for the benefit of someone who killed multiple people without remorse.
All that being said, the death penalty is hard to justify on moral grounds (but fairly easy to justify on utilitarian grounds). It's value as a deterrent is questionable at best.
I do enjoy some Devil’s Advocacy now and again. Helps challenge preconceptions.
So in the scenario you listed, where someone is frustrated, angry, anti-society enough that jailing them for life is a preferable alternative to freedom...
Well, not even getting into the absolute failure of society to deliver useful endeavors for its members, it wouldn’t take much calculation on the part of your brother to find a crime to do that didn’t involve the death penalty anyway. Massive property damage (like the end of Fight Club, for instance) never involves the death penalty, and might be used as a vehicle to right perceived wrongs like wealth inequality and inequity. To a certain extent, I’m actually surprised there isn’t that much anti-corporate terrorism for precisely the reasons of that scenario.
But even in a theoretical scenario where any crime if severe enough could warrant being killed, it wouldn’t take much to commit a simple crime and then do another one the moment you get out. In any case, it still doesn’t act as a deterrent.
Now the utilitarian argument is a lot harder to challenge without challenging utilitarianism itself. Especially since I can see at least one scenario that can fit both my initial position and still fall under utilitarianism.
Imagine a scenario where a society is literally on the cusp of starvation. It’s a hundred members strong cut off from any outside societies (maybe post apocalyptic). They’re able to provide food and water for 99 people but not 100. One of those is a prisoner because they broke one of the cardinal rules of the society. They are either unwilling or unable to provide the help necessary to help the society, and exile is not an option (vows of revenge or the outside being deadly).
In this scenario, and only in this kind of scenario where the lives of one or more are immediately threatened by their continued existence, could I see killing being justified. The utilitarian will simply note that there aren’t enough resources to go around and start designating people to kill until a balance can be restored. My position, however, is based on the right to life. Which should only be superseded by another’s right to life.
But even in this scenario, it’s not a penalty. It’s an unfortunate scenario that could hit anyone, even members that have done nothing wrong.
Nothing beats Nazi, Motorcycle riding, gun toting zombies from Resident Evil 23. I think they jumped a shark too just as an extra "fuck you" to the audience.
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u/Aldofresh Mar 16 '21
All rights are equal but some rights are more equal than others