In Ernest van den Haag’s article called “The Ultimate Punishment,” he firmly believes that capital punishment is a good thing. His argument is a utilitarian argument. Utilitarians believe that an action is morally right if it brings about the best consequences for as many people as possible. For instance, slavery would be seen as bad since it puts people at a disadvantage until a scenario where it brings about better consequences makes it okay. Per Ernest van den Haag, he believes that benefits of justice outweigh anything else. This idea is seen when he is referring to the cost of capital punishment. Van den Haag states, “the implied assumption that life prisoners will generate no judicial costs during their imprisonment. At any rate, the actual monetary costs are trumped by the importance of doing justice” (van den Haag 140). Van den Haag does not care about the price, he cares about getting justice. Justice prevails over anything.
The benefits of executing the guilty outweigh killing the innocent at times. When van den Haag analyzes information from Professors Hugo Adam Bedau and Michael Radelet on their survey on how many innocent people become wrongly executed, van den Haag replied, “I do not doubt that over a long enough period, miscarriages of justice will occur even in capital cases” (van den Haag 139). Van den Haag grants that innocent people will die. However, he compares it to normal, everyday activities like construction. People do not give up doing these jobs even though innocent people die doing them. Executing the guilty is worth it, to van den Haag, no matter at what cost.
There are moral benefits from executing the guilty according to van den Haag. He says that murders are getting what they deserve. It is morally right to kill the guilty because murdering makes people give up their claim to being a person in society. Van den Haag states,
By committing the crime, the criminal volunteered to assume the risk of receiving a legal punishment that he could have avoided by not committing the crime. The punishment he suffers is the punishment he voluntarily risked suffering and, therefore, it is no more unjust to him than any other event for which one knowingly volunteers to assume the risk. Thus, the death penalty cannot be unjust to the guilty criminal (van den Haag 141).
By voluntarily giving up their position in society, it grants the government with the ability to place the murderer under the death penalty without any moral obligation. Since they knew the consequence of murder ahead of time, it is just that they receive the death penalty.
Justice is what happens when someone breaks the social order. The murderer is only getting what he or she deserves per van den Haag’s reasoning.
The deterrence effect is minimal to none when it comes to capital punishment. In the United States, states with capital punishment appear to have an increase in murderers rather than decrease. However, to van den Haag, this does not matter. Even though it does not have the intended effect to deter criminals from committing murder, he says that capital punishment is still morally correct. This idea is presented when van den Haag states, “deterrence is not altogether decisive for me either. I would favor retention of the death penalty as retribution even if it were shown that the threat of execution could not deter prospective murderers not already deterred by the threat of imprisonment” (van den Haag 140). This quote indicates that van den Haag does not care about the deterrence but the fact that the death penalty will be an act of justice.
According to Ernest van den Haag, people who are against the death penalty will always be against the death penalty no matter what. The people who undergo capital punishment are people who have done terrible things. It brings closure to families that have lost someone to the murderer’s crime. Unlike keeping the criminal alive through life imprisonment, it would be a better choice to end their existence permanently.
