I just don’t think our legal system is competent to separate the Dylan Roofs from the Marion Bowmans.
Even if our legal system was, that wouldn’t stop a fascist government from using the death penalty to kill its targeted out-groups indiscriminately. Also, the death penalty isn’t a useful tool because it doesn’t fundamentally correct the underlining social and economic conditions that lead to the kind of violence it fails to deter.
Under some subjective moral systems the death penalty aligns with an ideal of justice. However all it does is kill more people. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. That is to say, no one learns anything of value from this process and dead people cannot learn. Justice does not demand punishment equal to that of the crime. In other words, justice can be obtained without necessitating us commit the very actions we have deemed to be unacceptable.
We should want to live under a system that is more humane than the criminals it prosecutes. Our punishment for failing to do this will be to be subjugated by our own flawed system and to have no one to blame but ourselves.
Even if our legal system was, that wouldn’t stop a fascist government from using the death penalty to kill its targeted out-groups indiscriminately. Also, the death penalty isn’t a useful tool because it doesn’t fundamentally correct the underlining social and economic conditions that lead to the kind of violence it fails to deter.
Under some subjective moral systems the death penalty aligns with an ideal of justice. However all it does is kill more people. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. That is to say, no one learns anything of value from this process and dead people cannot learn. Justice does not demand punishment equal to that of the crime. In other words, justice can be obtained without necessitating us commit the very actions we have deemed to be unacceptable.
We should want to live under a system that is more humane than the criminals it prosecutes. Our punishment for failing to do this will be to be subjugated by our own flawed system and to have no one to blame but ourselves.