Capital Punishment

• Reasons/ justifications for punishing- retribution

  • all guilty people and only guilty people deserve punishment in proportion to the severity of their crime
  • justice requires suffering for wrong doing- eg murder is punished by death
  • often supported by the old testament "eye for an eye" Exodus 21:23-27 only the Guilty should be punished, neither too leniently or too severely
• retribution objections

  • capital punishment is vengeance which is morally dubious
  • anticipatory suffering felt while kept of death row is more severe than just depriving life
  • retribution is just a reaction to emotion, there's no proper reason behind it
• Reasons/ justifications for punishing- Rehabilitation

  • many criminals condemned to death repent, express remorse and experience spiritual rehabilitation while on death row
  • aquinas said accepting the punishment of death allows the offender to expiate his evil deeds and escape punishment in the next life
• Rehabilitation objections

  • its not true rehabilitation since they don't re-enter society at the end they die :3
• Reasons/ justifications for punishing- Deterrence


  • executing convicted murderers supposedly deters potential murderers
  • there's no evidence either way lol but John McAdams - even if there is no deterrent effect killing a bunch of criminals for no reason is better than not killing them when it would've deterred murder
• Deterrence Objections

  • the stats dont show either way about whether captial punishment actually deters
  • theres also nothing conclusive on whether the death penalty deters better than life imprisonment
  • some might not be deterred since lots of murderers are mentally ill lol
• Reasons/ justifications for punishing- Prevention of Reoffending

  • the executed party cant kill again because blud is dead
  • life imprisonment still allows criminals to pose a danger to inmates and prison staff and they can escape prison to reoffend
• closure and vindication objections

  • not everybody would get closure from the offender dying
  • doesnt really justify capital punishment as a whole
• Reasons/ justifications for punishing- incentive to help police

  • plea bargaining- process through which a criminal gets a reduced senteence by helping police
  • death penalty provides the largest incentive for wanting a sentence reuced so its a useful tool to police
• incentive to help police objections

  • similar to arguments that torture is justified as it could be a useful police tool
• Reasons/ justifications for punishing- closure and vindication

  • death penalty provides closure for victim and or family
• Christian Perspective

  • old testament law says yeah
  • has an extensive list of crimes punishable by death including murder, cursing your parents, kidnapping and witchcraft
  • however one might say the old testament is outdated since the hebrews nomadic circumstances meant that they couldnt be stationary enough to imprison a criminal so punishment had to be death, beating or banishment which was basically death
• Christian Perspective

  • seems to object/ say no
  • objects to retribution matthew 5 "Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I tell you... If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also"
  • John 8 "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" when a group tries to punish an adulterer woman
• Natural Moral Law- Primary Precepts

  None of the precepts oppose Capital Punishment, preserve innocent human life, live peacefully ain an ordered society and worship god all endorse it.
• Natural Moral Law- Secondary Precepts

  capital punishment is right because it prevents murderers reoffending, preserving innocent human life.
• Natural Moral Law- Secondary Precepts

  capital punishment is right because it punishes criminals, which promotes living peacefully in an ordered society by deterring others from crime.
• Natural Moral Law- Secondary Precepts

  Capital punishment is right because the old testament promotes the death penalty for many crimes
• Natural Moral Law- Secondary Precepts

  capital punishment is wrong because the new testament critiques the old testament's view on retribution
• Natural Moral Law- Aquinas' own view

  • in summa theologica says its okay if the state does it, not private individulas for the "welfare of the community" and that the criminal accepting the punishment meant they could expiate their evil deeds and escape punishment in the next life
• You could use natural law to suggest killing a criminal is the same as killing a harmful wild beast
• Situation Ethics- examples

  • killing a known murderer in a weak prison system where he's likely to escape and reoffend or likely injure peoplle within the prison- pragmatic, personal, positive
• Situation Ethics- examples

  killing an innocent man to maintain public order- positive (agapeic calculus) one death for the many, pragmatic, relative, personal
• Situation ethicists may debate on the justifications of capital punishment eg whether or not it deters
• Virtue Ethics- virtues

  • consider the virtues, you can show prudence by executing for deterrence and protection since its a practical way to assure those things
  • however if you believe reform is most important than punishment, killing a criminal without giving them a chance to reform might be showing the vice of callousness
• Virtue Ethics- Aristotle

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  • aristotle put great stock in justice which is every virtue "summed up" so he would probably say capital punishment good since it is a way justice is distributed
  • says one thing justice is about is restoring the balance between gain and loss so executing a murderer actually fits that definition very well, in a life for a life way

  there are objections to this like macintyre and the idea that eudaimonia is every virtue summed up, not justice
• situation ethics examples for

  cases where it will give closure and or vindication to the family like with a rapist
• situation ethics examples against

  in a case where rehabilitation is possible it wouldnt be loving to deny the criminal that chance in favour of killing him
• virtue ethics


  capital punishment was used in Athenian society, so Aristotle presumably assumed that it was part of life in the Greek city states. like Socrates being sentenced to death by drinking poison hemlock, for ‘impiety’ and for corrupting the youth of Athens
• virtue ethics


  eudaimonia is also concerned with society, part of it is living freely within one and acting virtuously is supposed to benefit everybody on a societal scale. this wider view benefits it as capital punishment is a state matter and often justified through protecting society either by deterrence or preventing reoffending
• virtue ethics- bad habit forming behaviour


  • capital punishment could be bad since the more the state executes the more likely they'll be to do it even when innapropriate.
  • but if the state is doing it for a good reason like backing a weak prison system then it could still be right, a virtuous system of people doing one bad thing for the greater good.
  • but there's also the issue of desensitisation, the witnesses of executions making them crueller to people and negatively effecting society