What I Learned from Executing Two Men
The difficulty with trying to argue down the death penalty is that you end up arguing on so many levels.<p>This article mentions the dollars and cents expense of the death penalty; this is an empirical fact, either it is cheaper to execute someone or cheaper to imprison them.<p>This article mentions the ineffectiveness in protecting society; this is also an empirical question, although it is harder to measure than the monetary cost.<p>Finally, the article speaks of the emotional and moral cost to those employed to carry out the execution.<p>But the article only devotes a single sentence to the core of the argument, at the very beginning: the author has come to believe that life is either hallowed or not, and he prefers to believe that it is always hallow, and killing always wrong.<p>This is the core of the problem.  Some people believe killing is always wrong.  Some people believe justice requires the execution of those convicted of a capital crime.  Heck, sometimes these contradictory beliefs are held by the same person.<p>All the other arguments don&#x27;t matter.  If killing is always wrong, you pay the cost of life imprisonment and don&#x27;t execute people to save money.  If justice requires a life for a life, you don&#x27;t scrimp on that, either.  You pay whatever monetary, emotional, and moral costs are necessary for justice to be done.