Assignment task:
The death penalty must be abolished. There are three broad threads for this conclusion. The first thread involves the simple matter of justice. Executing someone for a crime is unjust. The reason that leads us to believe the death penalty is unjust is that executing someone for a crime they committed is pre-meditated. It is cruel to tell someone that they will be killed at a certain time and at a certain place on a certain day. In fact, the cruelty of the government in this pre-meditated killing is often more cruel than the acts of the murderer that led him to be put to death in the first place. This cruelty rises to the level of injustice. The second thread involves deterrence. The death penalty does not deter crime. We know this because we can look at states where the death penalty is practiced, and their violent crime rates are higher in some cases than those states who do not practice the death penalty. The third argument thread for why the death penalty should be abolished is the issue of the distribution of the death penalty. The death penalty is poorly distributed. If you are poor, and non-white, and you are convicted of first degree murder, you are far more likely to be sentenced to death than if you are white and wealthy. Further, If you murder a white person, you are far more likely to receive the death sentence than if you murder a non-white person.
1. The death penalty must be abolished
2. Executing someone for a crime is unjust.