Capital Punishment

Jakai Harrison

In order to live in a civil society, we enter to a social contract. This is not a physical

contract that we get at birth and sign. It is a contract that we are automatically enter into. The social contract essentially says that we sacrifice some of our rights as individuals for the betterment of the society as a whole. We give up those liberties to the state, and in return, we

receive protection. In that contract, we give the state the right to punish individuals who violate the terms of that contract. As a civil society, the state is the sole authorized user of violence.

Citizens of the state grant that right to the government through the social contract. The state has the power to punish us the way it seems fit. The ultimate punishment by the state is death. The death penalty is a highly controversial topic within the nation. Currently, the support of the death penalty is at the lowest it has been in 45 years. It is a very divisive topic among people in the country. When it comes to the death penalty, there are many different theories that people live by. On one hand, there is the libertarian theory of punishment and the death penalty. On the other hand, utilitarian has a view on capital punishment that is different from that of libertarians.

Libertarianism has a long history in the world. Roots of the theory can be found in China

and western Europe. Famous thinkers of the philosophy included John Locke, Thomas Paine, David Hume, Thomas Jefferson, and Adam Smith. Libertarianism is the philosophy that we all have individual rights. The markets should be free, and there should be little interference by the state. The state’s primary role is to protect those individual rights. Libertarians have many different views of punishment that they live by. Punishment is a topic that cannot be ignored when talking about libertarianism. There is the pacifism position to punishment. Those libertarians say that individuals are not allowed to use unauthorized force. Another is the moderate pacifism position where use of force is only permitted in self defense cases. There are many libertarians that allow violence for retribution punishment, but there are also many that do not condone any violence as retribution. They see compensation as the remedy for any offenses. The common belief held by libertarians is retributive in nature. They focus on how the punishment should match the crime that was committed. Murray Rothbard gave the example of a person stealing $10,000 from another person. The punishment for the thief should be that they

have to pay back the $10,000, and in doing so, they lose their individual right to own the

$10,000.

In contrast, the utilitarians have another philosophy on what is just punishment. The

utilitarian view is more of a consequentialist. Utilitarians use punishment as a deterrent for

individuals. It is used to discourage individuals from breaking that social contract that we are all entered in. They also focus on incapacitation. Instead of dissuading individuals from committing crime, people are put in prison so they cannot commit more crimes. The consequentialist approach also works to reform the individual who has committed the crime. It seeks to reshape the individual morals. Utilitarians view laws as just laws if it creates the greatest number of happiness for the greatest number of people. So in turn, punishment is only just if it promotes the greatest number of happiness. Capital punishment is a contentious topic within the libertarian community. There are

some in the community like Rand Paul and Gary Johnson who thinks the death penalty should be abolished. Libertarians are for limited government encroachment in people’s lives. They believe that there was to be a legitimate reason for the state to hinder individual liberties. It is safe to say that the death penalty is the ultimate hindrances in a person’s life. The government is ending their life. The government has to provide a real reason as to why they are taking someone’s life. The burden doesn’t only fall on the individual being put to death, but it reaches beyond that. Putting someone to death is an expensive process. It costs more money than that of any other remedy the state can impose on an individual. This puts an unfair burden on the local taxpayers. They are forces to pay for a system that is nothing of their own fault. As Jones points out, a death row case can send a rural town into economic despair. Towns are forced to raise 10 their local taxes to pay for these executions. In the view of the libertarians, taxing individuals more limit the freedom an individual has. Those burdensome taxes limit the economic freedom that libertarians believe that the government should not infringe upon.

Another example of the government’s encroachment into people’s individual rights is the

idea of wrongful convictions. Since the year 1973, 140 people have been convicted and

sentenced to death to only have their convictions overturned. This happens very often. Jones argues that this is not a good thing. The government, again should have justification of killing individuals, and they should make sure that they are killing the right person. We have the right to our life, liberty, and property and the government should limit it’s ways to take those rights away from us. The liberal wing of the libertarian thought says the death penalty is a system that puts a burden on the taxpayers who have to foot the bill of the whole process. It hasn’t shown to make us safe, and being that a principle of libertarian belief is limited government, this doesn't demonstrate that. There is another school of thought in the libertarian camp when it comes to the death penalty. Others see the death penalty as an extension on the retribution theory. If a man kills someone, the only logical punishment for that man is to be put to death. Murray Rothbard talks about this in his article. He acknowledges that murder is a peculiar crime. The classic teaching of

libertarianism is compensation, but what amount of money can be alloted for murder? Rothbard represent that portion of libertarians who believe that we live in an “eye for an eye” world. If a person takes an individual's right to life and freedom, the only remedy in that situation is for the state to use violence, the death penalty, in return. Rothbard believes that the victim, or in this case, the victim’s surrogate should be able to pick the punishment.

As it is in libertarianism, there are differing beliefs within the utilitarian ideology. Bentham, the father of utilitarianism, was against the death penalty. He did not see a real

argument for the death penalty. He believed that the arguments against the death penalty were far more superior than those that were for the death penalty. He said that once a person is killed, they are not unable to repay society. If they were able to give something back to the community, it would benefit everyone. John Stuart Mill was someone who was in favor of the death penalty. Mill’s support of the death penalty lied in the principle of deterrence. Deterrence is a big idea in the utilitarian framework. In his speech in front of Parliament, Mill says, “And we may imagine somebody asking how we can teach people not to inflict suffering by ourselves inflicting it? But to this I should answer—all of us would answer—that to deter by suffering from inflicting suffering is not only possible, but the very purpose of penal justice.” Mill talks in speech to Parliament that death is the least severe because it is fairly quick. That is aligned with the utilitarian idea that we should strive for the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

In my opinion, I do not believe that the death penalty is a just form of punishment. The

death penalty has enough flaws within the process that rules it unjust. The state should not have sanctioned killings of the citizenry. That is something that I do not believe in. The death penalty also has been used disproportionately against certain groups in society. The Supreme Court ruled in unconstitutional in Fuhrman v. Georgia for the way the statues were written and for how it was applied. They eventually reversed their decision after states rewrite their statues to fit the new standards. Innocent people have also been tried, convicted, sentence, and even killed throughout this process. If we are going to have the death penalty, we should ensure that innocent people aren’t killed, and if they are, there is no need to keep this system in check. The cost of the process is burdensome to the public. It costs the taxpayers a slew of money to keep an individual on death row, and the public should not be burdened with that cost. It has been shown that the death penalty doesn’t accomplish its goal of general deterrence. The death penalty is in place to deter individuals from committing capital crimes. There is little evidence to suggest that it has done that. Why do we continue to have a broken system that costs us millions of dollars? There are many different schools of thought when it comes to punishment. Different theories explain how punishment is just or not. The ultimate punishment by the state is death. The death penalty has always been a contentious topic. People try to find philosophical reasons

why the death penalty is just or unjust. There are conflicting views on the death penalty in both the libertarian and utilitarian worldviews. In a just society, the government should not be able to sanction a person to death through an inherently flawed system.

References

Berg, Marteen. “Death Penalty and Happiness in States. Was Jeremy Bentham right?”. Journal of Social Research & Policy. 2010.

Hoskins, Zachary. "The Moral Permissibility of Punishment." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed April 26, 2018. http://www.iep.utm.edu/m-p-puni/#H3.

Jones, Ben. "The Libertarian Case Against the Death Penalty." Libertarianism.org. October 24, 2013. Accessed April 29, 2018. https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-against-death-penalty.

Jones, Jeffrey M. "U.S. Death Penalty Support Lowest Since 1972." Gallup.com. October 26, 2017. Accessed April 25, 2018. http://news.gallup.com/poll/221030/death-penalty-support-lowest-1972.aspx.

Rothbard, Murray N. "The Libertarian Position on Capital Punishment | Murray N. Rothbard." Mises Institute. June 02, 2010. Accessed April 24, 2018. https://mises.org/library/libertarian-position-capital-punishment.

"Speech In Favor of Capital Punishment." Speech In Favor of Capital Punishment - Wikisource, the Free Online Library. Accessed April 30, 2018. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Speech_In_Favor_of_Capital_Punishment.