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My straightforward argument against the death penalty as that I'm pro-life in all cases (thus, anti-abortion and anti-death penalty).
I believe this because I think there has to be a hard fix on the sanctity of human life. If there is room for slippage, slippage does indeed occur and, after a few decades, you have what we have today - several million people "okay" with third trimester and even post delivery abortion. To be intellectually consistent, I don't think we should have that kind of slippage on the other end of life either (ask me how I feel about assisted suicide!)
On the death penalty side, while the cases you highlight are incredibly egregious, I don't think the State should be in the business of killing its own citizens. I like your argument about it not mattering who pulled the trigger. In death penalty cases, it seems to me like they're constructed to diffuse responsibility through a heavily bureaucratic process so that no individual has to bear full responsibility for condemning a person to death and then effecting that sentence. The prosecutor is simply adhering to their office's guidelines, the Judge allows for the consideration or pursuit of the death penalty, the jury validates that such evidence exists and was compelling, the hangman simply carries out that which has already been handed down. Who "pulled the trigger?" It doesn't matter. We've just bureaucrat-brained ourselves into collectively thinking "surely, not me!"
I also believe in the idea that someone can find meaning and redemptive power in their life even in the most awful conditions. Man's Search For Meaning is a small book about how even in Auschwitz, a guy was able to find a reason to keep going. After his experience, Frankl then had a full career. If I can forgive anyone for, instead, curling up into a bottle forever, it would be a literal holocaust survivor. I have little personal sympathy to criminals, but I believe they should have the ability to choose to try to find redemptive meaning. Now, that does come with caveats...
I absolutely believe there are many types of crimes that not only deserve but necessitate strict incarceration for one's entire natural lifespan. There are people who are either too dangerous or who have violated the social contract too egregiously to ever be let out again. They should be caged until they die. Though difficult, I do believe they still could find their own redemptive meaning even in prison. Finding that meaning, however, is not a ticket out of jail.
Yes, I am that guy that thinks that Red from Shawshank Redemption should've never been granted parole.
I don't write any of this to convince you. I'm trying to offer the best description of what / how / why I am anti-death penalty.
EDIT:
@Hoffmeister25 has a death penalty argument that I don't agree with, but 100% respect. As I read him, he believes swift execution is necessary to control the potential spread of defective genes, as well as to give clear and obvious consequences for violating the social contract. This is a consistent and honest opinion. But I worry about the "slippage" here - do we eventually turn into a state where one's potential for violent crime results in a minority-report style pre-execution? That may seem hyperbolic, but, you know, think about it duuuuude.
First, a tangent: this "pro-life in all cases" mindset seems to me a case of a whole swathe of society confusing a slogan with a moral principle. It's baffling to me why so many on both sides seem to have the idea that killing should either be absolutely indiscriminate or not done at all. Most of us are pro-jailing criminals but no one has ever insisted that we ought to jail babies as well to be consistent.
If you are a pacifist or have a principled objection to the state executing people in cold blood, by all means make that case, but abortion has absolutely nothing to do with it.
To interact with the case that you do make, I'm not sure if your slippery slope argument is supposed to apply to abortion / euthanasia only or to the death penalty as well. If it is aimed at the death penalty, I don't think it's well-supported and would be hard to meaningfully reason about given that practically every society in history up until the past hundred years has put some people to death. There's essentially no example one could look at of stepping onto the slippery slope since humanity has always existed on the supposed slope.
Your other support doesn't seem to be an argument but just an expression of your belief that the state ought not to be executing its own citizens. I think it ought to be, because the only human justice possible for a murder is the execution of the murderer, and only the state is in a position to do this with due process which at least attempts to ensure that the guilty is punished rather than the weak. What's your support for the belief that the state shouldn't do it?
If responsibility is diffused between many different people in the process of executing someone, that's fine by me as long as the person is actually guilty. They should all feel good for having worked together to achieve the only earthly justice possible under the circumstances. The fact that, in the modern west, most of them don't feel good about it, because they aren't persuaded of the goodness of justice, is a hindrance to the system working well in practice, but not an argument that the death penalty is principally unjust.
While I have problems with 'seamless garment' and 'consistent ethic of life' ideas as theological mandates, they are philosophically consistent- society shouldn't sanction killing people is a sentiment that doesn't preclude jail terms at all.
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I don't think this is a good thing. I don't want societies to put their own citizens to death.
Yes. This was my intent. To offer an explanation of belief for the OP.
Because I believe human life is one of the few things that is intrinsically beyond the State to decide on. Again, as my original post said, I 100% support the State's ability to put you in a box forever and never let you out. What is the meaningful distinction between that and death from the perspective of the State or the aggrieved? Or, to flip it around, what is the marginal utility / justification / satisfaction found in execution versus life imprisonment? If a prisoner is alive, there exists some chance that they may develop sincere feelings of remorse and regret. It'll never be enough to justify their release, but I believe a State ought to give its citizens every last chance to be human. If, as some will argue, some of these prisoners are just beyond-the-pale insane and unpredictably dangerous, I'd offer that raises a much more difficult argument; should the State be in the business of exterminating those we deem mentally incapable? You can see how quickly it gets to eugenics.
Are you raising the utilitarian perspective because that's the grounds for your opposition to a state putting people to death? If so, I'm not sure it works out very well.
This one's pretty easy, it's incredibly expensive to house an unproductive prisoner for 50+ years and incredibly inexpensive to e.g. build a gallows.
But I only address the utilitarian argument because you raised it, my belief is in no way utilitarian and is simply founded on the principle of retributive justice that a murderer should die for justice to be done.
That's cool. I think we're just going to hard disagree on this one.
A society gets to decide if human life is sacred or it isn't. Our current society says "no, not sacred" at the beginning of life and well through to the end. My belief is the opposite - human life is sacred and should never be treated otherwise within the society[1]. There isn't much beyond this strict categorization. That's why, in my original post, I cited hoffmeister as having an argument I disagreed with, but still respect.
I look at justification of beliefs to be a problem of recursion. "I believe x based on y ... I believe y based on z ..." At the end of the day, a lot of belief (and justification for it) boils down to what you place your value in and how various value-having things rank relative to one another. I put human life at the tippy top. Perhaps you don't, or your relative ranking is weaker. Either way, it's fine as long as your own argument is cohesive, which I believe it to be. But you won't be able to reason me out of my belief unless you reason me out of my value rankings. If you have an argument for why human life ought not be my number one value, I'll hear and consider it.
[^1]: When you have issues outside or between societies you're talking about war or something extra-judicial that by its very definition cannot be handled by the same codes and laws as within a society. Let's just leave this as is for now and not try to get into just war theory.
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