Death penality: wrong in all circumstances

The death penalty should be opposed in all circumstances.

I believe that the right to life is the cornerstone of human rights. It can therefore never legitimately be the purpose of the state to take life. There are of course cases where human life is taken as the consequence of other legitimate policies: e.g. the waging of a just war, a police operation to free a hostage, self-defence, etc. but in all these cases the loss of life is the consequence of the action, never its purpose.

It is from the protection of human life (even of evil-doers) that all other rights derive. (NB there are 12 US states which have no death penalty, so the US is not all bad on this issue.). No European country (except the dictatorship in Belarus) has a death penalty, nor does Canada, Australia, or New Zealand.

Of course there are practical arguments against the death penalty: it’s irreversible in the event of mistake, it focuses attention on the criminal and not the victim, it equates the crime and penalty and therefore tells the criminal “yes’ you can kill, if you don’t mind dying, etc. But my fundamental objection is not practical but moral.

New Mexico abandons the death penalty

The death penalty is wrong because the universal right to life (even for the most evil) is the building block upon which all other rights are constructed or derived. The right to life is conserved not primarily for the benefit of the criminal, but for the benefit of the moral structure of society.

That New Mexico has abandoned the death penalty is to be welcomed, even if the state is acting for financial reasons rather than ones of principle.

This point should be made: every case of the death penalty is wrong, not fundamentally because it is expensive or that it fails to act as a deterrent, but because the right to life, even of the most evil, is a moral absolute, just as the right not to be tortured is – or at least in theory.

More precisely, the right to life is the building brick upon which other rights (e.g. the right to be treated with dignity) are built. Abolishing the death penalty does not of itself guarantee a civilised society, but it is not possible to have a civilised society in which people are sentenced to die.