There are lots of arguments for the death penalty. I’m not sure that I would consider too many of them to be ‘good’. Let’s dispose of a couple of the ‘bad’ ones and then consider some of the stronger arguments.

Justice means an eye for an eye. If someone has murdered someone it’s appropriate that they should die themselves.

It has a kind of visceral appealing satisfaction to it. It’s simple. It has at first sight a logic and sense of justice. It provides some form of closure for the victim’s family. And it satisfies that primitive desire for revenge.

But even in the simple dumbed down Star Trek universe where every problem has a solution and everything is simple enough for a 14 year old to understand this idea doesn’t fly.

It doesn’t take much application of wisdom to reveal the pitfalls. Let’s consider a few:

• Revenge is a primitive instinct rooted in selfishness, anger and pride. It’s a “You took something from me, so now I’m going to take something from you,” attitude. Selfishness, anger and pride are generally considered to be sins for very good reasons. They really aren’t a good basis upon which to build a system of justice.

• So if the murderer killed one person, killing him is justice? And if he killed two people, does that mean we kill him twice? And fifty people? Apart from the practical impossibility of killing someone twice, this logic raises other problems. He crippled someone for life - so we should cripple him for life? He crippled one person, put a second in a coma, and killed a third. So we should cripple him, put him in a coma and then kill him? And so forth. A little reflection reveals that we have some major logic problems with this idea of justice. How about, he killed my son, so we should kill his son?

  Sadly, this kind of sick idea of justice is practised by the ignorant. In Pakistan a young man raped a young girl. The village elders met under what they believed to be Sharia Law, and concluded that since the young man was the son of father (1) and had violated the daughter of father (2), then one of the sons of father (2) was entitled to rape one of the daughters of father (1). That’s where this kind of logic, coupled with ignorant rampant misogyny, takes you. No punishment for the young rapist. No justice for the girl who’s been raped. No - we will inflict a vile sexual assault upon yet another innocent young woman instead and call that justice. Link and Link. No - this isn’t in accord with Pakistani Law, but the laws of the city don’t always get be practised in the countryside.

  And this kind of logic doesn’t serve as an effective deterrent either. There’s an old saying - “might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.” If the death sentence applies for killing one person, well you might as well kill a dozen.

The Death Penalty Is A Strong Deterrent.

Well - not really, as mentioned above. The Death Penalty is very absolute and binary - Death equals Death. In reality there are many shades to the crime of murder. There is a big difference between torturing a dozen people to death over a period of months, and a drunk killing another drunk with a push that caused him to fall over and hit his head on a concrete pavement, which caused internal bleeding in the brain and subsequent death. If the same sentence applies to every crime that can be classified as murder, then ‘justice’ flies out of the window. There are worse things than dying. Someone who is dead has been deprived of life, but isn’t suffering. The threat of long term suffering can certainly act as a more effective deterrent. (Not saying such cruel and unusual punishment is necessarily the way to go, just making the point that it can be a far more effective deterrent).

Dead People Don’t Re-offend.

Well that’s certainly true, but is that really a good argument? By that logic we should execute people for a parking fine. The murderer probably won’t re-offend if we lock him up for life. Or if we put his eyes out. The thief probably won’t steal again if we chop his hand off. Yes- they still do this in Saudi Arabia, but they do a lot of things in Saudi Arabia that are pretty ugly.

So are there any good arguments for executing murderers?

Possibly. Here are two that may carry some weight.

It’s Economical.

What … you’d advocate that the state should kill people to save money? Hardly a good argument at first sight, and yet - consider this. In India more than 500,000,000 people do not have access to a toilet. Link. A lot more than half a billion, yes that’s billion, not million, by some estimates. It costs a lot of money to imprison someone for life, or even just twenty years. So might it not be a more just allocation of wealth / scarce resources to use them to give some of the poor access to a toilet, rather than giving a murderer food, shelter, accomodation, and a toilet for decades because he has committed a horrible crime? If you aren’t careful people will be committing murders to get into prison, because you are treating the prisoners better than the poor.

Of course that’s hardly an argument that applies to the United States. Or is it? People have committed crimes to get into US jails too - for the health treatment. Link.

In the USA the cost of imprisoning someone for a year in New York is USD 60,000 per annum. Link. In Australia it’s AUD 110,000 pa. Link. Doubtless the cost in India is less, but even so - that’s a lot of resources that could be spent on the innocent poor instead.

In short, economics can be a very good reason for considering the death penalty. No one is saying it’s good justice, or even particularly moral, but in an imperfect world where we can’t afford everything we would like, we have to make trade offs between the lesser of two evils. And most people would agree that keeping murderers in conditions the poor can only dream of hardly amounts to justice, punishment, or an effective deterrent.

And there is one other argument that carries weight.

Dead Men Tell No Tales

You have got to be joking? That’s a ‘good’ reason for the state to kill someone?

Well I’m not sure about ‘good’ but aparently it is a ‘strong’ argument, yes. Or so the United States and many other governments argue. Not for murder as such. This is the death penalty reserved for … terrorists? Well, perhaps more accurately … enemies of the state.

It’s ugly. Very ugly. I’m not even suggesting that it’s moral. But it is a reality in this imperfect fallen complex world.

Perhaps naively President Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay. Link. Didn’t happen. Link. Why not. Because …

Because what?

Well basically because there are people in there who can’t be tried and can’t be released. So they are being held in prison without trial - indefinitely. That’s the ugly reality.

• Why can’t they be tried? Because they would talk. And what they would say could reflect very badly on the USA, and would also harm US espionage operations. In short it would get CIA spies / informants killed.

• Why can’t they be released? Same reason. Plus the fact that they might well go back to trying to kill US citizens.

So - indefinite imprisonment without trial. A fate worse than the death penalty.

Obama didn’t like it. I don’t like it. Most of you readers don’t like it. But - it’s an ugly truth and no one has got any better ideas about how to solve it.

And when the USA got its hot little hands on Osama Bin Laden, what did they do? Here they have the single best source for gaining information to enable them to counter Al queda alive and totally vulnerable and they … shot him dead!?

Why? Because dead men tell no tales.

And Osama Bin Laden could have told a whole lot of very interesting tales. So, no trial, no interrogation, (if you believe President Obama), just death.

Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians die in war zones each year. The common term is ‘collateral damage.’ The evidence is that the USA causes a lot of those. So do various other western nations conducting operations against ISIS. So does Russia. And so does Saudi Arabia, notably in Yemen.

So how how do you square that with the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and the death of Osama Bin Laden?

It’s ugly, whatever way one looks at it.

Tomorrow I’ll look at some of the good arguments against the application of the death penalty.