Also, I need help for an assignment: I need as many arguments as humanly possible for arguing against the death penalty.
I am building off of ax, screwtape and mia so sorry if some of this is a bit repeitive.
OK two things first. You want to both make arguments against the death penalty AND undermine arguments for the death penalty/question assumptions made by these arguments. That's the two broad categories of what you want to do.
So, against the death penalty:
- fallible and irreversible, killing innocent people is obviously wrong and cannot be justified regardless of your stance on killing the guilty
- corollary as mia mentioned is that more blacks and poor people end up getting the chair
- demographics: see above. also death penalty for minors, mentally disabled people is wrong because these people shouldn't be held fully responsible for their actions
- more expensive than life in prison, both because of the actual procedure and the lengthy appeals processes that eat up lawyer $.
- killing is wrong no matter what/2 wrongs don't make a right/won't bring back the dead/inhumane/we lose our humanity too/etc line of thought
-corollary is that the government should not be in the business of taking lives (if you are religious you can also argue that god alone can do this)
- you can back this up with the stats about the us being among a really awful group of countries (saudi arabia, north korea, axis of evil) in its death penalty practices, the supreme court ruling that banned the death penalty for minors talked about international morality or something, you could read the summary of that
- doesn't actually deter crime, people who are committing murder either don't think they'll get caught or commit a crime of passion and don't stop to think about the punishment
- life in prison is worse than death as a punishment
- let's examine the justice system. it has several goals that coexist, don't let anyone claim it is just to punish:
- separate someone who is a danger to society from society (prison does this as well as death).
- punish someone/revenge (prison is a punishment!)
- deter others from committing the crime (see above about the death penalty not being any more effective)
- REHABILITATE. This is the most important one, for terms that aren't life you want the person to return to society having learned something/repented AND gained skills that will help them avoid ending up back in jail. Now, people who might get the death penalty would get life and probably not end up back in society, but it is still important that they learn from their crimes, that is philosophically and morally valuable, what good does it do if they die not thinking they've done wrong? Some would say they don't deserve this chance blah blah and I think there's probably a religious argument as well about why people deserve a chance to repent.
Now let's rebut the arguments for the death penalty.
- you can cross apply the above to a lot. "the death penalty deters crime" "no it doesn't here are the stats." etc.
- ok, so the philosophy that justifies the death penalty is this: "Each man is under a social contract with the state to abide by its laws and this includes not harming others. When you murder, you break the social contract and society has a right to kick you out." OK this justifies exile or jail but not death.
- a second, stronger argument from some big name philosopher, locke maybe, is "Once someone kills another human being, they have violated god/humanity's rules (only God has the right to decide when a human life should end) and they have forfeited their humanity and their right to life. So the state/other citizens can punish them by killing them, and this is not murder because they've given up their right to life. (often added: God doesn't think they are worthy of life anymore either)" the response to this is that if God/whatever wants them dead it should be in his hands, but that you disagree that anything gives the state or other citizens the right to take a life, no matter how "worthless" that life might be. Also fallibility comes in here, as man and the state are fallible but God isn't - basically, lock 'em up and leave it to God to do the life-taking.
Maybe I'll have to get around to using some adblocking software. But I'm lazy.
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i used to block all the crap in the upper right corner for the total tickets, t-shirts, etc. and that thing about linking on all those different sites.
What happened to the quick reply box 
no...why?
every pit stop (which wasn't often, i only stopped for gas once each way) i had to break out those squeegees, otherwise my car would've looked totally trashy. and my car is way too awesome to be mistaken for that.
