Introduction
The death penalty is an example of moral controversy in modern society. There is a continuous discussion about whether or not individuals accused of certain crimes deserve the death penalty. This issue, which isrelated to a significant ethical problem, lacks an obvious solution.
First, it is necessary to comprehend what offenses are deemed severe enough to warrant such a punishment. Furthermore, it is still uncertain whether the judge can identify the actual offender and avoid accusing the innocent. Even when the case appears straightforward, knowing what the court will decide is impossible. Since the death penalty incorporates numerous morally prejudicial ideas like the worth of human life, retribution, and the purposeful brutalization of the community, there are more counterarguments than justifications.
Proponents of the Death Penalty
People who support the death penalty contend that imprisonment alone is insufficient punishment for an individual’s heinous crimes. While incarceration will keep the offender away from the community, it does not fully compensate for offenses such as mass murder or child rape. The second moral issue is imposing constraints on society because people fear the death penalty and will not commit grave crimes.
Opponents of the Death Penalty
The first reason to oppose the death penalty is the violation of the natural right of all humans to live. It is morally controversial that other people can decide whether the individual deserves death for their actions. The second moral issue is the non-humanistic side of waiting for the execution, which typically lasts for years. The court tries to avoid potential mistakes in accusations, which means that the person convicted of capital punishment lives with the burden of the upcoming death.
Evaluation
From the perspective of the Ethical Egoist, individuals typically create moral boundaries regarding what offenses are permissible in their minds based on their interests. For instance, some of them believe that murdering and abusing their children is a crime that needs to be executed instantly. Others may not find it more awful than the violent murder of several adults (Salmieri & Mayhew, 2019). Thus, capital punishment’s essence is vengeance, which can be called an ethically biased notion. The approach of Ethical Egoism allows individuals to emphasize what is vital to them.
From the Ethical Egoism perspective, the death penalty makes human life not valuable, and everyone can suffer. For example, the utter occurrence of the death penalty represents a return to the Biblical idea of retribution, “an eye for an eye” (Salmieri & Mayhew, 2019). In this instance, there is a bias regarding if rapists and murderers should be executed separately or if all criminals should be sentenced to execution.
In other words, there is a risky oversimplification in this situation. The possibility of making an error is a significant factor that makes capital punishment undesirable, and the Ethical Egoist can become the victim of this error. It is impossible to determine the offender, and an innocent person may be charged with acts they did not perform.
From the Social Contract theory perspective, capital punishment ensures that all individuals abide by the law because they fear the death penalty. Vengeance is the rational outcome of breaking the law, even though such assessments have a solid emotional and subjective bias. It is a method to manage hostility and aggression, demonstrating that this conduct is intolerable (Rachels, 2019). It allows the assumption that the death penalty prevents people from breaking the laws significantly, ensuring societal balance and stability. Rejecting the death penalty ensures that people will not be killed because of deliberate lies or judicial mistakes.
A typical instance is when a child accuses her stepfather, who has supposedly sexually abused her, in front of the jury. The child can say it for numerous reasons that are not connected with the fact of molestation. For instance, she despises her mother’s current spouse and believes he is to blame for her parents’ preceding breakup. She is additionally scared to confess to lying to the judges for fear of being disciplined for saying so. Because of this, her stepfather may receive the death penalty, and the effects of this slander will be significant (Crawford, 2020).
The groups that deal with amnesty issues resolve multiple problems related to these errors in legal decisions (Crawford, 2020). Most criminals who receive a death sentence in the United States remain behind bars until they are executed, which is the court system’s bottleneck (Crawford, 2020). It demonstrates that the death penalty is not used in many situations.
The ANA code for nurses has a controversial perspective on the death penalty and implies a conflict between the nurse’s professional and familial duties. For example, a nurse can regard participating in the death penalty as immoral due to her cultural or religious background. Simultaneously, they have to participate in it if they work in prisons, which is their professional duty. This situation leads to moral controversy, and the nurse has to solve this issue and choose between familial or professional responsibilities.
The best course of action in the situation with the death penalty balances loyalty to the community and humanism. It is especially evident when the dangerous criminal is segregated from the rest of society in prison, but they are not killed for humanity’s sake. It allows people to avoid making the judicial mistake of accusing the wrong person and does not allow the criminal to harm others.
The Social Contract theory supposes that the community should pursue the principles of justice and avoid actions that endanger the balance. The desire to use capital punishment for the most dangerous criminals is predominantly emotional, which is against the norms of the social contract theory (Rachels, 2019). The employment of the death penalty is primarily a moral issue, and it is impossible to refer to ethics as a genuine concept. This way, the judgments and conclusions about this matter rely on the individual’s ethical stance. The argument is even more contentious due to this subjective slant because proponents of the death penalty base their arguments on ideas like revenge and anger and calculating the sentence’s severity dependent on the offense’s ethical brutality.
The rationale against capital punishment is comparatively precise and includes instances from actual situations that demonstrate its intolerance, consistent with the Social Contract theory’s point of view. In turn, the ideas of revenge and compensation are debatable from a moral perspective (Rachels, 2019). The death sentence increases violence because it fundamentally makes culture more brutal. Torture is a synonym for the death penalty, and torture indicates an uncivilized society. Because of all these problems, the death penalty cannot exist in a civilized community that respects the value of human life and the principles of justice.
Conclusion
The appeal to the death penalty is a social issue related to various moral controversies. Among the apparent problems are the likelihood that the court will make a mistake, the witness will lie, and individual opinions concerning which offenses need to be classified as the most heinous. In some states, the death penalty is typically considered a retaining factor for people. Most offenders sentenced to capital punishment die because of age and illnesses in detention, waiting for the implementation of the verdict. As a result, the death sentence is far from ethical principles and ineffective.
References
Crawford, C. (2020). Access to justice for collective and diffuse rights: Theoretical challenges and opportunities for social contract theory. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 27(1), 59–86. Web.
Rachels, J. (2019). The elements of moral philosophy. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Salmieri, G., & Mayhew, R. (2019). Foundations of a free society: Reflections on Ayn Rand’s political philosophy. University of Pittsburgh Press.