I just noticed this post of yours and thought it was interesting. (I am a fan of your learn about guns website and found my way here to this site which is a good one too.)

I have to say that I can not quite agree with you on this point, however. You certainly level some good criticisms against aspects of the death penalty in this country but I think your arguments miss the heart of the issue. The fact that minorities suffer this punishment to a proportionately greater degree is not a problem on its own. It is a problem if it is also true that minorities do not commit a proportionately greater degree of crimes punishable by execution. Yet, even if that is the case, this ought to make us want to reform the justice system but does not touch on the legitimacy of capital punishment.

The fact that putting someone to death costs more than putting them away for life is a similar sort of non-problem for capital punishment advocates. The increased cost shows that the judicial system requires greater limitations on the application of the death penalty therefore making it less and less likely that innocent people are convicted. If the application of capital punishment is used only in instances when the evidence is uncontrovertible and restrictions are placed on the appeal process, then costs ought to go down significantly. The problem here is not with the death penalty itself, but with the way capital punishment cases are handled in the judicial system.

I also take issue with your argument that capital punishment can not be justified. You seem to implicitly accept the premise that the justification for a punishment must be that it somehow prevents more crimes from being committed either by preventing the criminal being punished or by deterring other would be criminals. This is not the only way to justify punishment. A husband who catches his wife cheating on him, then kills his wife and her lover, and then regrets his actions and turns himself in still ought to go to jail. The reason he ought to is not because he is liable to commit another crime or because putting him away will deter others, but because he is being made to pay for the harms he inflicted. And this is the essence of punishment: paying for a wrong you have committed either with your property, your liberty, your life, or any combination. Punishment is not future oriented in that it is not meant to prevent crime in the future, but rather it is past oriented in that it is meant to in some sense right past wrongs.

It is certainly true that the points you have raised ought to be addressed in some manner. Innocents ought never to be put to death, minorities should not be punished disproportionately to the crimes they commit, costs are too high, and so on. Nonetheless, the death penalty is a fine way to punish the worst criminals as it certainly “makes them pay” for what they have done with their most valuable asset: their life.