The death penalty affirms the value of human life

The argument

Human lives are invaluable. Because of this, we must treat every person’s life with dignity and respect. In committing heinous crimes, people treat invaluable human beings as if their lives are dispensable. They grievously violate their victims' rights, often subjecting them to torturous treatment and death. If our society claims to value its citizens, it must punish those who take human life appropriately. The only fitting punishment for such a grievous wrong is death. The death penalty sends a clear message: humans are valuable and taking another’s life is not an inconsequential wrong. In making this statement, it ultimately affirms the value of human life. For this reason, we should not abolish the death penalty.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Our society should certainly value human life, and punish murder in a fitting way. However, this does not necessarily mean that we must retain the death penalty. Through giving life in prison sentences, we can continue punishing human rights violations, ensuring that our communities know life is valuable. In this way, we can send a clear message of value for all life- not just the victims' lives. Although many argue that the death penalty reflects value for life, it completely devalues the lives of criminals. Regardless of their past mistakes, criminals are people too. They deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. The death penalty reflects value for only certain peoples' lives and should be abolished.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] This premise is the one the argument's conclusion has to survive, and it stands in tension with it. If every life is invaluable and must be treated with dignity, the principle covers the person to be executed as well, and no ground is offered for exempting them beyond their conduct — which is precisely the point in dispute. [Rejecting P2] The description of the wrong is not contested, but nothing about the gravity of an act settles the form its punishment must take. The same reasoning would license torture for torture and arson for arson, which almost no proponent of this position accepts. [Rejecting P3] "The only fitting punishment" is asserted, and the whole argument rests on it. Proportionality does not require equivalence, and legal systems abandoned exact reciprocity long ago for reasons the premise never addresses: irreversibility in the face of wrongful conviction, which is not hypothetical; unequal application by jurisdiction, by race of the victim and by quality of counsel; and the finding that capital cases cost more and take longer than life sentences. The counter puts the expressive point directly — a state that declines to kill can equally be understood as making a statement about the value of life.