<RE: Death Penalty>
My reasoning led me to ultimately reject it. When a youth, I accepted it for utilitarian reasons.
But upon deeper consideration, I found it is expensive and non-uniformly applied. Life without parole is cheaper, and if you get it wrong, there is the possibility for compensation. This is the counter to the "utilitarian argument".
Ultimately, I looked at the way government runs most things, and concluded that they would do poorly at this as well. Short term benefits are overwhelmed by the relatively large portion of the people that it is applied to incorrectly, later being overturned. If I proposed killing head lice in a school and the 5% of the kids who supposedly had lice but didn't, died, I'd want to find a different method of lice control. This is the trump of the "public health" argument for the death penalty. It is non-selective and non-reversible.
There just aren't that many first degree murderers in society as a percentage. I don't think death penalty is a big factor in second degree. At least that is the instruction for the jury - the guy or gal was in an agitated state and was not cognizant of their action. If they planned it, then it is not 2nd degree. If they thought well I'll just get 10 years in jail and I'm not going to care about that, then it is not 2nd degree because they considered the consequences of their action. This is a "not effective" trump to the "utilitarian" argument.
Finally, we are alone amongst first world countries that do it - this is the (world) "community standard" argument. We shouldn't do it because our peers don't - makes us worse than our peers in the world community. Unless, of course, we could consider China, Russia and India our peers. We didn't use to. |
