Can the death penalty ever be justified?

Guernsey Martyrs, executed for heresy, 1556 // Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

The death penalty, also referred to as capital punishment, is the state-sanctioned execution of an individual convicted of a grave crime. The death penalty has been commonplace across history, first codified in Athens, Rome and Babylon. Regarding the UK, in the 18th century 222 crimes were punishable by death. However, amendments began in the early 19th century and following the last execution in 1964, the death penalty was suspended in 1965 and fully abolished in 1998. However, the story is substantially different in the United States. The death penalty is still legal in 27 states (although many have suspensions), and the federal death penalty (imposed on defendants of capital offences by the military or government), applies nationwide. Though temporarily prohibited in 1972 due to it being imposed too arbitrarily, the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988. As of December 2024, 3 prisoners remain on the federal death row.

The death penalty can never be justified morally, for easily manifested prejudices render it vulnerable to abuse. Furthermore, it has its inextricable roots in persecution of people of colour in slavery, and of women in witch hunts where the purpose was clearly domination. Even in cases of entirely unacceptable crimes under any circumstance such as paedophilia, the death penalty additionally cannot be justified on practical or strategic grounds, since there is no evidence it deters crime. Moreover, since it is the ultimate sanction, once criminals have committed a capital offence, they are in fact much more likely to commit further offences. In contrast, prisoners sentenced to life without parole tend to be the best-behaved in prisons. 

Delving deeper into the death penalty’s moral abhorrence, a key issue is the fallibility of human judgment: people can be wrongly convicted, which by itself should be a reason to prohibit such an absolute and irrevocable action. In the US, a shocking 52% of people wrongly sentenced to the death penalty were black.  The disproportionate prosecution of people of colour further proves how vulnerable the death penalty is to cultural biases and prejudices. 

In the last few weeks, two pertinent case studies have come about in the United States that exemplify the inhumanity of the death penalty and hence the need for abolition. South Carolina, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Indiana’s legislatures are moving towards bills that would classify abortions as homicide. In South Carolina, Oklahoma and Indiana, murder is a capital offence, meaning women who access abortions could face the death penalty. Women who have complicated miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies need abortions to survive, yet in these states they may be stuck in a deadlock, faced with the prospect of dying either way. This bill is not only an attack on women’s dignity in effort to control their bodies, but also deeply contradictory: Oklahoma defines homicide as “the killing of one human being by another”, meaning the death penalty should also constitute homicide. As an ethical principle, the death penalty is contradictory: it is imposed on defendants accused of taking or seriously harming a life, yet this is then done unto them by the state, rendering the argument that murder is universally wrong null. 

Trump has issued an executive order calling for the Attorney General to extend the death penalty. This would impose capital punishment on all crimes severe enough to demand its use, including murder, genocide, and killing or kidnapping the President or a Supreme Court justice. In cases where immigrants are the defendant, Trump wants to “seek the death penalty regardless of other factors”. Considering Trump’s well-known, disdainful views on immigrants - who he has previously called “animals”, falsely accused of eating people’s pets, and most recently proposed sending to Guantanamo Bay -  it is clear that his prejudice has spread into his stance on capital punishment, laying the path for biased approaches in sentencing.

The death penalty can never be justified. Not only is it a contradictory punishment and ineffective deterrent, subject to human error, but it is also deeply vulnerable to prejudices and abuse by bad actors aiming to intimidate and control sections of society. A punishment so absolute has no place in a tolerant society.