There are two good reasons for the death penalty, from my viewpoint.
However, we have to first address a point from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm—without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself—the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”
That phrase is the tip-off that we are talking about prudential judgment, not dogma. It is an evaluation of the current state of affairs in penal systems.
Thus it obviously cannot be “dogmatic teaching on faith and morals”. After all, which penal systems in which countries? Is the US penal system equivalent to Rwanda? As penal systems exist now, or as they exist in 10 years? Will they still show such improvements 1000 years from now, or will we have gone through another empire collapse with a long period of Dark Ages? (Remember, dogma is an eternal truth.) Who is making a judgment on the ongoing capability of different penal systems for “effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm”?
Getting back to reasons for the death penalty, first what about penal systems where death row prisoners murder other prisoners or guards? What about the penal system in Columbia or California or elsewhere, where drug lords routinely rule their organizations from jail, planning and ordering executions of judges, prosecutors, or rival gangs?
There is an advantage to finality.
Also there is the issue of defending society from the criminal. For example, what about this recently published study,
GETTING OFF DEATH ROW: COMMUTED SENTENCES AND THE DETERRENT EFFECT OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT from
The Journal of Law & Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. Here is a brief summary:
This paper merges a state-level panel data set that includes crime and deterrence measures and state characteristics with information on all death sentences handed out in the United States between 1977 and 1997. Because the exact month and year of each execution and removal from death row can be identified, they are matched with state-level criminal activity in the relevant time frame. Controlling for a variety of state characteristics, the paper investigates the impact of the execution rate, commutation and removal rates, homicide arrest rate, sentencing rate, imprisonment rate, and prison death rate on the rate of homicide. The results show that each additional execution decreases homicides by about five, and each additional commutation increases homicides by the same amount, while an additional removal from death row generates one additional murder.
If a single execution does, in fact, prevent five murders – or even worse, if a single commutation causes 5 additional murders – doesn’t that argue for the death penalty? After all, the CCC tells us: “Legitimate defense can be not only a right
but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. …”
Does it make a moral difference whether we know ahead of time the names and addresses of the 5 people whose lives are saved? I don’t think so. After all, God knows even if we do not.
