Death Row

     As John Stuart Mill put it,

“IN ALL ages of speculation, one of the strongest obstacles to the reception of the doctrine that Utility or Happiness is the criterion of right and wrong, has been drawn from the idea of justice. The powerful sentiment, and apparently clear perception, which that word recalls with a rapidity and certainty resembling an instinct, have seemed to the majority of thinkers to point to an inherent quality in things; to show that the just must have an existence in Nature as something absolute, generically distinct from every variety of the Expedient, and, in idea, opposed to it, though (as is commonly acknowledged) never, in the long run, disjoined from it in fact.”

Death row has long been a symbol of Earth’s most capital punishments for the most heinous of men and most heinous of crimes. When first implemented, sentencing men and women to death was to exterminate people who we have deemed not fit to live in a civilized society. Serial killers, mass rapists, horrible excuses for human beings exist on death row. The question brought forth to this enterprise is, is the US Government doing a utilitarian good by killing people? If the government and society cast the impression and rule that murder is morally wrong, how does the government operate within a sphere of using morally wrong actions to fix morally wrong situations? As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail,

“Over the past few years, I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends”

This question has arisen, is the death penalty an immoral action to end an immoral person? Do two wrongs make a right?

We as a civilized people must preserve innocent life. We as a civilized people also have a question, are there people horrible enough, that the government has to remove from society for the rest of their time? To put them to death? If your answer to that question is no, you must also consider the question of, is a sentence of life in prison inhumane as well? The gun versus the cell. Both are weapons which lead to the inevitable white light, without ever seeing the light of day again. Both are death. Are there people who must be taken away from society for the rest of their days. From a utilitarian perspective, hurting one man forever to protect the safety of countless innocent children, is a good thing. Whether you advocate for the gun or the cell for these people, the government does have the duty to hurt the bad to protect the good.