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With recent tragedies caused by ruthless criminals like Timothy McVeigh, cries for death penalty have become insuperable. Yet, many see execution as compromising human rights and virtuous conduct, whether from utilitarian, vitalistic, virtuous or deontological viewpoints. ...
A traditional punishment theory put forward by John Locke argued that all rights are forfeited when committing any crime (1); once forfeited, punishment is justified for maintaining justice, any notion of which must be impartial by definition (2). Thus society may punish criminals however necessary to prevent harm to the public, including execution. ...
In virtue theory, virtuous character has utmost importance for action. ... Executing capital offenders prevents them from ever harming society again (12). ... Assuming that persons facing execution are unhappy, one innocent life saved by one hundred executions contradicts utilitarianism’s aim to minimise unhappiness. ... Moreover, although every execution costs about six times more than each imprisonment for life (14, 20), three factors are excluded. ... However, by diverting vast resources to capital cases, which comprise a very minority of all crimes, the state has fewer resources for compensating victims of other criminal cases (14). ... But capital punishment has proven equally effective to life imprisonment (23, 24), too slowly eventuated (14) and far too uncertain (15) to deter criminals. ... Nonetheless, the death penalty can spawn capital crime, and therein unhappiness, by dubbing the executed martyrs, as for McVeigh: for some offenders, execution serves to enlist similar future criminals, to further capital crime in support of unethical ideals (23, 26). ... Further, if one of McVeigh’s ilk murders many people, taking that murderer’s single life is not proportionately just. ...
Most retributivists agree that McVeigh’s cast deserves worse than swift death (33). However, the death penalty has evolved by embracing virtues of compassion by developing swifter, more sterile means of execution, from the guillotine (34) to lethal injection (15). ... Since medicine’s dawn, primum non nocere or ‘first do no harm’ in Hippocrates’ Oath has shepherded medical ethics (36). ... Unlike electrocution, which usually induces harrowing agony (18), lethal injection is ideally a benign mode of execution (39). ... In vitalism, human life is only valuable if that life has a Desirable Consciousness (47, p. ... From such perspectives, physicians may participate in beneficence and virtuous compassion to minimise suffering in execution (39). This also increases utilitarian happiness since the physician has acted, as entrusted by society (50), in society’s best interests by incapacitating a dangerous criminal (43, p. ... Under duty-based deontology, where moral duties are pre-eminent above all else, the act of participating in execution defiles a physician’s duty of non-maleficence, thereby corrupting that physician’s moral integrity (48, p. ... However, this duty is negated once the capital offender consents to physician participation, for instance, to minimise suffering (4), as provided by the principle of autonomy. ... 80-81); consequently, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that punishments involving ‘torture or lingering death’ are inhumane (30, p.
Approximate Word count = 2350
Approximate Pages = 9.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
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