The Death Penalty: Practice

“Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause, but above all things he must keep his hands off the property of others, because men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.” Machiavelli, “The Prince”

Justice and Morality are not the same. The problem with the Death Penalty is not that it is unjust, nor that it is immoral. The problem with the Death Penalty is that it is so emotional.

Passionate people make mistakes. The Death Penalty is only called for in cases which excite the passions of the people. No matter how heinous the crime that a person is accused of, it is still wrong to punish an innocent man. In the heat of passion the tendency is to say, “Well the authorities say it was this fellow. Some of the evidence might not be too clear but the experts say it was this fellow. Kill Him.“ It follows automatically that mistakes are more likely in Death Penalty cases than in other cases.

Death cannot be undone. Once you make a mistake in a Death Penalty case it is a bit late to say “Oops, sorry about that”. In the Death Penalty you have a system which is inherently more likely to miscarry because of the passions involved and no way of fixing the errors when it goes wrong.

It is very difficult to develop a model of a Death Penalty system which will not be subject to such errors. In the absence of such a model system, it is very difficult to accept the exercise of the Death Penalty by the State as a good idea. It is for this reason, not because it is immoral or unjust that the exercise of the Death Penalty by the State is questionable.

It is for this reason that moratoriums on the Death Penalty have recently been enacted in several states. The People of each state should make their own decisions concerning the Death Penalty, and if considered legitimate, care should be given to the process by which it is applied and the dignity of Citizens should be addressed according to the principles developed in the previous section.