This does not mean that a person cannot be punished for the crimes that they commit. Deterrence can exist in a world in which the death penalty does not. For example, the state may remove the offender from civil society and take away the rights that they were given upon signing the metaphorical contract. Using capital punishment as a deterrent is ineffective for several reasons.
First, the risk of losing one’s life is inherently visible to the offender in the commission of a crime that would theoretically warrant the death penalty. If an individual decides to murder another, there is always a high risk that he/she will lose his/her life due to a confrontation with law enforcement or the potential victim. Since the offender is already choosing to commit the crime in light of the threat of losing his/her life, adding another threat of the loss of life is not going to factor into the offender’s decision-making calculus.
Second, in order for a punishment to have the potential for deterrence, it must have a reputation of occurring immediately after the crime has been committed. The death penalty, in the western world, can take several years to take effect. This is necessarily ensuring that receiving the penalty will not factor into the decision-making calculus of the offender because perceived short-term benefits always come before long-term harms in the minds of individuals who wish to commit a serious-enough crime to warrant the death penalty.
Murder, the case I am using here, is either premeditated or “in the heat of the moment,” or at the very least, occurs when the offender has a clear lack of concern for human life. In the first case in which the murder is premeditated, the offender has had a long time to consider the risk of the action he/she intends to commit and presses on to commit the murder with the knowledge of the risk in mind. Possibly, the premeditation of the offender leaves him/her occupied enough as to not allow any time to consider the risks involved. In this case, too, the potential loss of life does not interfere with the offender’s plans for the murder.
In the case of voluntary manslaughter, also known as murder in “the heat of the moment,” the decision to commit the crime is not a rational one. The offender is upset enough to kill without consideration of the consequences. Here, too, the threat of one’s life does not factor into the decision, if we can name it by that, of the committed murder. In the latter category of second-degree murder the murder occurs in the commission of another crime in which the loss of life is somewhat easily predicted. These crimes are usually rape, arson, etc., all of which involve the implicit lack of concern for human life. There are several punishments that would achieve the deterrence that proponents of the death penalty claim it achieve. For example, life in prison serves as an equally effective or more effective means of deterrence than does the death penalty. I delve further into the means of deterrence in later chapters.
There is a prime example that is cited by proponents of the death penalty. Such individuals purport that Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany during World War Two, should have most definitely received the death penalty if such an opportunity had arisen. When applying the principles and arguments I have put forth thus far, I found that even regarding this extreme example, capital punishment should not be permitted.
Two main reasons get cited in favor of using capital punishment on one of the most infamous men in world history. The first is that Hitler was the mastermind behind one of the most immoral acts humankind has ever experienced. Indeed, Hitler committed arguably the most human damage in man’s short history, however the question we must ask is, is the murder of millions of people more immoral than the killing of one person? All things being equal, if one intends to kill another with no personal connection to the victim, and the victim is innocent, and therefore no possible way that one’s morality may be pardoned, then there is a level of lacking concern for human life that is unparalleled by any other action except for another murder. There is not an endless depth to the immorality of the human mind, and one can reach the end of this depth by taking the life of another. Therefore, whether an individual kills one innocent person or 100 innocent people, an equal amount of immorality exists within each of them. Thus, the argument that capital punishment suits the most heinous individuals is a logical fallacy.
The deterrence argument falls harder still in this example. When we consider the level of risk that Hitler undertook during the Holocaust, it is clear that the fear of losing his life at the hands of the state would not have prevented the actions he caused during the second world war. The cause of his death, the suicide of himself, is further proof of the lack of effectiveness the death penalty would have had in this case. Delving further, the act he committed was so inconceivable that no one could have predicted it. In order to prevent such another egregious act it would have been useful to examine the mind and thought of this human being. The interrogation of this most heinous man necessarily would have resulted in the insight that the people of this world were so desperately anxious for, and continue to be so to this very day.
Acknowledging that any criminal justice is not perfect, and most far from it, proponents of the death penalty must concede that the killing of several guilty offenders is worth the loss of one or more innocents. Allowing an innocent person to die because society believes in revenge for criminals follows encapsulates the same immorality as any other murder and therefore, following the same logic, someone else must be put to death. Of course, the lack of accountability forces the victim of this crime to go without revenge, a contradiction implicit in the death of a falsely accused individual. Because the death penalty has several moral and practical flaws, and exists within the framework of an imperfect justice system, it must be abolished.
