The topic of the death sentence is tough and philosophical. The notion that there are some crimes that allow applying institutionalized execution to those who committed them is not obvious at all if one thinks deeply and thoroughly about it. In this reply, I would like to share my thoughts on different perspectives about this issue and analyze the author’s opinion about the rules that may be viewed as the criteria for sentencing a person to death.
The first criterium of the author for applying the death sentence is the unquestionable guilt of the person in question. I totally agree with this idea. If there are any reasonable criteria for legally killing a human being, then this is the one. No one in his mind would argue that murdering people for the crimes they have not committed is wrong. However, the second and the third rule is more questionable and unclear. Both of them pose a serious philosophical question: How many people an individual must kill, or how much damage a person must cause before it becomes justifiable to sentence him to death. I struggle to answer this question considering its extreme complexity.
In my opinion, the discussion of morality or rationality of the death penalty may be conducted from different perspectives. I believe that there is no correct point of view on this matter. One may choose emotional, rational, and philosophical lenses to look at this (Nopriandi, Ardhiansyah, 2020). An emotional point of view, obviously, connected with the feelings of people. People may feel anger and rage that will convince them that death is a proper punishment for a monster. The rational approach, I think, is the one that influences the official position on the death penalty the most. This approach is connected with the calculation of gains and losses as a result of applying death sentences. Finally, the philosophical view is associated with the essence of life and its intrinsic value, and the concepts of good and evil. It is obvious how different each approach is, and I would argue that none of them is more universally valid than the other one. This is why the death penalty is not an easy topic.
References
Nopriandi, T., Ardhiansyah, R. F. (2020). Paradigm of death penalty. Lampung Journal of International Law, 2(1), 57-68. Web.