After discussing capital punishment in several threads on GAG, I wanted to write a MyTake that summarized my opinions better. It's easier to make it more clear in a take than in a question.
1) Innocent may get executed
The main reason I'm against capital punishment is because of mistakes do happen. Innocent people may get wrongfully accused and sentenced. Judges, investigators etc. are humans too and aren't flawless. Maybe it was just an accident. But in some cases framing also happens. Some people may frame someone else if it benefits them.
If a person is innocent and gets sentenced to time in prison, it's still possible to release that person if they finds it out. You can however not revive a dead person. Execution is irreversible and permanent. It can destroy family bonds. Innocent people also tends to want to live more often than guilty people. If someone gets wrongly executed, there would be more innocent people getting affected. The person themselves, their family, the victims of the crime and their family.
2) The government sets a bad example
The point with a justice system is to protect people in the society, rehabilitate criminals if possible and give them a lesson. When you're sending someone to prison, you takes away their freedom as punishment and to teach them that committing a crime isn't acceptable. It's fines and prison time that's supposed to be the consequences. Not the criminal's action being repeated again.
If killing is wrong, the government should show it. It would be double standards if the government condoned it killing someone, but condemn other doing the same. If the executioner kills a murder, should he also be killed and his killer killed after that? It would be a repetitive cycle with that logic. The government shouldn't just sit on the fence. Either life is so valuable and killing is therefor very wrong, or the government aren't valuing life as much as they claims to. The double moral may create more confusion.
3) The inmate's family members would lose their loved one
In many cases the inmate's family members are as innocent as the victim and their families. When an inmate gets executed, his/her loved ones would also be affected negatively. They can never visit him/her in prison or do phone calls anymore. Their grief would be very similar to a regular death. You can't always say the family are responsible for the criminal's behavior. Perhaps they had a difficult time and tried their best, but although they tried hard they just couldn't prevent it happening. It's not easy to control another being's mental state. Death penalty is like a family avenging another family for a crime only a person in that family committed. It's an outdated way to deal with the problem and is similar to what the vikings did in the past which is called "blood law" or "blood revenge".
4) Guilty criminals gets an easy way out
Letting the criminals get away with it isn't always better than a state and families that wants revenge. The justice system is about limiting the criminal's freedom as a following consequence of what they did. Some criminals wants to die and think it's easier than life in prison. If they've to live in prison, they've to think over what they did and prison life isn't always fun. When prisoners wants to die, the government is allowing them the freedom to get their wishes granted with an execution. At some point Norway's terrorist Anders Behring Breivik wished to die because he didn't want to reflect over what he did and didn't enjoy spending his time in prison. Norway hasn't capital punishment and the mass murder of 77 people didn't get his wish granted.
Some terrorists for instance thinks death is a honorable thing. Especially if they gets killed by people they're considering their "enemies" because they believes it would make them "martyrs". Both radical Islamist terrorists and Breivik shared the same views on this. Other criminals committed the crime spontaneously without planning it in advance and don't want to think about it later. In prison they've to think about it. They gets more time to reflect and change if they stays longer in prison than getting killed earlier on. Some even manage to change enough and be a productive member of the society again. Even criminals who don't get released may learn something. So the death penalty isn't always too inhumane, other times it just makes it easier for the criminals.
5) Death penalty isn't always cheap
Many pro-death penalty people thinks death penalty is cheaper than feeding and clothing inmates for a longer period of time. It's not always the case. Trials can last for a very long time and is very expensive. Especially with appeals. Judges, lawyers, investigators and so on gets well paid for their jobs. But which examples the government sets is sometimes more important than price in my honest opinion. It's true taxpayers pays for prisons, but isn't it worth doing it? They're both paying for a fairer justice system, that the government shows that killing is wrong and making inmates reflect more over what they've done.
Summary:
Because of innocent may get executed, the government would do double moral, more families would lose a loved one and criminals may get an easy way out I'm against the death penalty. It seems like the death penalty would be either too humane or inhumane - but these outcomes would affect the wrong people.
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