Transcript Moral issues arising from Capital Punishment

Moral Issues
Arising from
Capital
Punishment
Does anyone have the right to kill?
• This is a political and ethical
argument.
• It's based on the political principle
that a state should fulfil its
obligations in the least invasive,
harmful and restrictive way possible.
Evaluate it…
Should everyone have the right to
life?
• Human life is valuable.
• Everyone has an inalienable human right to
life, even those who commit murder;
sentencing a person to death and executing
them violates that right.
OR
• Can a person, by their actions, forfeit human
rights, and that murderers forfeit their right
to life.
• “…it may be justifiable to kill a sinner just as
it is to kill a beast …” Thomas Aquinas
Evaluate it…
Should we forgive?
We cannot teach that killing is wrong
by killing.
U.S. Catholic Conference
To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge,
it is not justice.
Attributed to Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Evaluate it…
Do we have the right to revenge?
• What if everyone took revenge for
every little thing?
• Revenge is an emotion – Are we happy
with the Government acting
emotionally?
Evaluate it…
What should the purpose of
punishment be in a modern society?
• Retributions is revenge
• Deterrence – uses people as a
scapegoat
• Protection – what about protection
from brutalisation?
• Reform?????
• Maybe the criminal need protection
from themselves…
Evaluate it…
What of execution of innocents?
• Mistakes are made
The death penalty legitimizes an irreversible act
of violence by the state and will inevitably claim
innocent victims. As long as human justice remains
fallible, the risk of executing the innocent can never
be eliminated
Amnesty International
• In the USA, 116 people sentenced to death have
been found innocent since 1973 and released
from death row. The average time on death row
before these exonerations was 9 years.
Evaluate it…
Is the death penalty humane?
• Some argue that all ways of executing
people cause so much suffering to the
condemned person that they amount
to torture and are wrong.
• Many methods of execution are quite
obviously likely to cause enormous
suffering,
Evaluate it…