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I do not believe that the death penalty is an effective crime deterrent, but that is not a reason to oppose it or seek its abolition. We should keep the death penalty for the statement it makes about our society: we will absolutely not tolerate murder, nor keep murderers amongst us.

Many people these days subscribe to the fallacious notion that imposing the death penalty on a murderer is the moral equivalent of committing a murder. The problem with this view is that it only takes into account the similarities in the outcome - dead people - while attempting to blur the distinction between the motives behind the two events.

Put simply, an execution carried out in response to a murder, after a careful weighing of the evidence, is as far away morally as one could get from a cold-blooded killing carried out for selfish reasons. It is simply wrong to claim that the two are equivalent and that both ought to be banned.

That this is so can be understood by questioning the general moral claim that those opposed to capital punishment hold: capital punishment is wrong because it is wrong to kill other people, and it is wrong to kill other people because they have a right to the continuation of their natural lives; therefore, since a murderer is a person, that person has similar rights and cannot be executed.

Unfortunately for those opposed to capital punishment, they tend to stop there. What they fail to do is further consider the nature of rights amongst we human beings: basically, rights are what we each naturally possess that demand that others refrain from taking certain actions against us, and in the mutual understanding of this we exist at peace with each other. When another individual initiates an aggression against us, we have the right to retaliate and seek compensation, and at the same time the individual initiating the aggression loses the right to not be harmed. Essentially, one who initiates an attack simultaneously surrenders his or her rights.

Therefore, when one person murders another, two things happen: 1. the murdered person's rights are violated and they are unable to claim compensation or retribution, and 2. the murderer has forfeited his or her right to not be harmed.

This then demands that a third party correct the wrong. No one disputes this, but it is at this point that many claim the fallacious notion of execution being the equivalent of murder, pointing out - correctly - that a life in prison is also a harm, and should be considered adequate punishment to secure justice on the part of the deceased.

The problem with this thinking is that it completely devalues the life of the murdered person. It says in effect that if one person destroys unjustly the life of another, we will spare the person who commits such an atrocity. It says of us that we will value the life of the murderer, when the murderer has demonstrated that he or she does not in turn value our right to life. By this action, we make the claim that the murderer may murder people and still expect to be secure in his or her right to life, that the murderer may take a life while we will only refrain from doing the same.

Therefore, the only morally correct thing to do is execute murderers, which says of us as a society that should one demonstrate a disregard for the right to life of others, we will treat you in kind by your own morals. By doing so, we affirm the value of the life of the deceased by removing something of equivalent value from the aggressor; anything less than this is an insult to the victim.

It does not matter if capital punishment deters crime, what matters is if we will tolerate murder and what that says about us as a people.

Learn more about this author, Paul E. Zimmerman.
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