Sociology Essay

There are a number of good and sufficient reasons to abolish the death penalty. It has been applied in a way that reflects racial, class, and ethnic bias; it is too expensive; innocent people have almost certainly been executed; it isn't effective at deterring future murders; its use is barbaric, and puts the United States in company with other countries whose values we often deplore; and many religious leaders and many religions reject the death penalty. But here we will focus on the moral question of executing a human being.

Killing another human being is wrong. Assuming Thomas Jefferson is correct, and certain rights cannot be taken away, then the right to life cannot be taken away. A murderer has, of course, violated one of the fundamental roles of society by violating another person's right to life. Does that justify the state in depriving the murderer of his or her life? If so, then the right to life can be taken away, which would mean it is not inalienable; if not, and the right to life is inalienable, then the state is violating the murderer's right to life. A right cannot be both inalienable and alienable; that is a contradiction, and such a claim cannot be true. Thus, the state has to determine if such a right to life can be taken away, and under what circumstances. But if killing a human being is wrong, and the death penalty is the intentional killing of a human being, then isn't it wrong? Or is the murderer, by having murdered, no longer a human being? Yet the United States recognizes that we cannot torture the murderer because that would violate the murderer's constitutional rights. So if the murderer has some rights, presumably he or she is a human being. We seem to have yet another contradiction, that the murderer is a human being and is not a human being.

Too often those in favor of the death penalty assume those who oppose it are "soft" on criminals, and almost act as if they are advocating that the murderer not be punished at all. Of course,...