The death penalty is possibly the most indefensible barbarism still practiced in the U.S. Forgetting the fact that estimates identify at least one-fifth of all death row inmates as innocent. Forgetting that a person committing the same action as the government paid worker would be charged with murder in the first degree. Forgetting all the people who care for the death row inmate and are hurt when he or she is executed. The death penalty is still wrong.
When arguing in favor of an action, in this case executing a convicted murderer, the burden of proof is upon the proponent to establish that action is necessary. So therefore, what does executing a murderer accomplish?
The first argument pro-deathers offer is that the death penalty reduces crime. Accepting this as true (ignoring the fact that it has not been proven that the death penalty reduces crime any more than simply removing those criminals from society permanently does), the concept of killing one group of innocent people (usually poor and/or black) to help reduce the deaths of another group (usually rich and/or white) is simply repugnant to me and I would hope to anyone else.
The second argument offered is usually a small quote from the Bible that is offered as “An eye for an eye.” All debates over translation and context aside, and also ignoring that this reference would imply that all rapists should be raped, all thieves stolen from, and all jaywalkers run over by a taxi, the United States has a simple concept called “separation of church and state.” What this means is that a Bible verse cannot be cited as a foundation for a law that will affect Muslims, Hindus, agnostics, Atheists and any other number of religious affiliations who might not believe in that God handing down our laws.
If any reasonable argument could be offered for the legitimacy of the death penalty, I would hear it with open ears, but until that time, the argument of “Why not?” is a somewhat hollow reason to put a person to death.