Utilitarianism and Capital Punishment

Utilitarianism and Capital Punishment

            While reading Shafer-Landau the sentence that stood out to me most was “Utilitarian’s reject any absolute ban on killing innocents (or torturing them, or stealing from them, etc.)” (148).   This goes as far to say as innocent rather than criminals, and at first I was puzzled to why utilitarianism would be OK with killing someone that isn't doing any harm in the eyes of the judicial system.  But the more I thought about it I remembered it doesn't matter whether the law allows or disallows the act if the act would provide more happiness to people it is considered OK.  Brain storming of cases that would fall under this category, of killing, torturing, or stealing from an “innocent” person, adultery and stealing from the rich and dispersing his wealth among the less fortunate.  There are so many different calculations one would have to do to prove that his or her actions were justified that it is hard to take yourself out of the act and be impartial.  Yet, you have to be impartial in order to be looking at the situation from the utilitarianism perspective.  In this case I came the conclusion that it is impossible to do the calculations while being impartial, therefore look at the situation in all aspects in the utilitarian’s view.  But this caused me to wonder what utilitarian’s view on capital punishment is.

            I initially thought that they would support it because it would give closure to some families and that it would rid the world of a vicious criminal, but I was wrong.  According to Antonio Cassese utilitarianism view that it is justified because “capital punishment deters criminals from murder.  Furthermore, killing murderers prevents recidivism” if released from prison they might kill again.” (Cassese).  Also that by using capital punishment we don’t expend as much money on murders by imprisoning them the rest of their lives.  These two arguments are both justified in my eyes, especially the second one.  He goes on to say that there is a utilitarianism argument against capital punishment too that states it is an irreversible act, and what if he or she is latter proven guilty?  One would have been killed for no reason, and he can’t be given his life back like he would have been if he or she would have been imprisoned. 

            Having these two views that both use utilitarianism views interest’s me because it should simply come down to a simple addition of the positives and negatives, and we still get two outcomes?  I thought that utilitarianism all agreed because math has no positives and negatives, but it truly comes down to one’s own moral views and values.  Tying it back into that idea that it is impossible to approach a situation impartially, which disproves, in my opinion, that utilitarianism can either support or not support capital punishment.

Works Cited

"Beyond the Death Penalty Debate." Beyond the Death Penalty Debate. Web. 06 Mar. 2015. <http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/commentary/data/death_penalty>.

Shafer-Landau, Russ. The Fundamentals of Ethics. New York: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.