Death Penalty in Canada Essay

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Should Canada reinstate the death penalty for planned and premeditated murder What is your position and why

Research Proposal

The topic of this research proposal is whether Canada should reinstate the death penalty for premeditated murder. The idea is to explore the reasons and justifications for capital punishment from the standpoint of the main ethical systems of virtue ethics, deontology and utilitarianism, while also touching on ethical egoism and the importance of having a higher understanding of justice and peace before reaching a final conclusion that capital punishment should be used to give people a sense of this higher justice but also the need for compassion. The two research questions that will guide the preliminary part of the research paper are: 1) is capital punishment morally justifiable? And 2) what are the reasons capital punishment is opposed by critics? The tentative thesis statement for this proposal is: the death penalty in Canada should be reinstated for premeditated murder on the principle of justice.

Why are people punished for their crimes? What is the driving idea behind punitive sentencing in criminal justice? Is life behind bars somehow to be considered more humane of a sentence for a person who commits premeditated murder? Or is knowing that one will never again have his freedom a worse punishment than death? Obviously these are all subjective questions and people will have different views on the matter, so it is important to define one’s own approach to the question. If one is talking about preferences and whether it is better to give up one’s life than to live the rest of one’s days in prison, one might go either way. But if one is talking about the issue of capital punishment from an ethical point of view, it is an approach can lead to a more objective response. One can look at the matter from the various ethical standpoints: deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics. One can also look at the ethical characteristics of the criminal justice system in Canada as it is today and compare it to the ethical ideals behind the big three ethical points of view. This paper will do just that and show that the death penalty in Canada should be reinstated for premeditated murder on the principle of justice.

Kronenwetter points out that in virtually every society throughout history “all punishment is based on the same simple proposition: There must be a penalty for wrongdoing” (1). The social basis for this proposition is that if there are now punitive consequences for wrongdoing people will not respect the righteous path and will not make an effort to go by the straight and narrow way. Accepting the universal idea that crime must be penalized, the question becomes: What sort of punishment should be doled out for crime? The concept of an “eye for an eye” punishment is an ancient one that stretches back thousands of years. In the case of premeditated murder, therefore, one might well ask whether the forfeit of one’s own life for the deliberate killing of another is fair. To answer that question, one must look at the ethical perspectives that help people to determine the moral course.

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The oldest of the big three ethical perspectives is that of virtue ethics, which was put forward by Aristotle. The main idea behind virtue ethics is that what is moral is that which helps to develop the character (Hursthouse). The cultivation of virtue, i.e., good habits, is posited as the main objective of a good life and a moral action is that which helps one to achieve the goal of virtue. Can it be said that the death penalty might assist one in obtaining virtue? It is possible that this could be the case. For instance, if one is deterred from unleashing one’s violent rage on another because one knows he might have to die if he is caught and convicted the deterrent aspect of the death penalty could be…

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…in any other way? Does capital punishment help society to be better in terms of knowing that it has an ethical criminal justice system?

The problem with asking that question is that it supposes that criminal justice systems are without corruption. The reality is that while systems as defined on paper are one thing in practice they are quite another. The reason for this is that people fall prey to Ethical Egoism, which is a fourth and common ethical perspective that is often found in modern life. Ethical Egoism is the idea that the ends justify the means. So in this case if one is a prosecutor and wants to make a name for himself by convicting a suspect in a killing and getting him sentenced to death, one should do so regardless of the possibility that the man might actually be innocent. If the innocent man is unable to defend himself then he deserves to die—such might be the thought of an ethical egoist (Holmes). In criminal justice it is not unlikely that such prosecutors are to be found because human nature is what it is and people tend to justify their own actions because it benefits themselves in some way. The fact that this could occur should raise alarm for those concerned with justice, however. If it is possible that an innocent man might be condemned to death does it not warrant that the practice should be abolished completely? Those who argue against the death penalty would certainly so say. The argument of those who oppose capital punishment is simply that it is cruel and inhumane and that in the long run it does not act as a suitable deterrent because obviously people still kill and kill deliberately.

Still, even if there are corrupt actors in the system it does not mean that the practice of capital punishment is in and of itself a bad thing. It might be that it is necessary to have it for the sake of embedding….....

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