A Progressive Forum should never advocate the Death Penalty.

[onenote]

111. Why I oppose the death penalty.

The issue of whether the death penalty should ever be administered as part of a criminal justice system is something that brings out strong emotions, as this thread indicates. People have varied reasons for their positions, and many people hold those positions with absolute certainty that their position, and the reason for it, is the correct one. Others, like me, are not without doubt about the subject, but may have reached a conclusion in one direction or the other.

My position is that I oppose the death penalty. My reasons are not among those that I've seen most often given here. For example, I don't oppose it because its not society's position to decide who lives and who dies. If not society, who? And its not because an innocent person might be put to death, although that is indeed a very strong concern of mine. My problem with that argument is that its a slippery slope. To suggest, as the OP did, that not opposing the death penalty is the same as supporting the execution of an innocent is much like saying that one supports imprisoning innocent people for life if one supports life in prison. To be sure, the death penalty is irreversible; but the life experiences that a person loses when imprisoned are also irreversible. There is nothing just about punishing an innocent person, no matter what the punishment.

My principle reason for opposing the death penalty is that it is reserved for the cases where emotion is most likely to outweigh reason. And where biases, conscious and unconscious, are most likely to influence the outcome. It is why there is demonstrable evidence that the death penalty is not and cannot be administered even handedly -- that its administration contains elements of arbitrariness that simply should not be acceptable to a just society.