The argument which states that the death penalty does not deter murder is weakly grounded at best. Dismissing capital punishment on that basis requires us to eliminate all prisons as well because they do not seem to be any more effective in the deterrence of crime.

Another claim proposes that States which do have the death penalty have higher crime rates than those that don’t, that a more severe punishment only inspires more severe crimes. The truth is that every State in the Union is different. These differences include the populations, number of cities, and yes, the crime rates. Strongly urbanized states are more likely to have higher crime rates than states that are more rural, such as those that lack capital punishment. The states that have capital punishment are compelled to have it due to their higher crime rates, not the other way around.

Death Penalty opponents also hold the notion that criminals do not fear death because they do not take time to think about the consequences of their acts. If that were true, then how do police officers manage to arrest criminals without killing them. When a policeman holds a criminal at gunpoint and tells him to get on the ground, the criminal will comply fully in the vast majority of of these cases. Why would they do so unless they were afraid of the lethal power of the gun? It is because regardless of what the opponents claim, criminals are not immune to fear. It is a common misconception to believe that fear is a thought process that has to be worked out with a piece of paper. It’s not. It is an instinct that automatically kicks in when one is faced with lethal force.

Another cliched argument is the question: “Why do we kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” That two wrongs do not make a right, therefore, executions are equivalent to murder. The term ‘murder’ is specifically defined in any dictionary as the UNLAWFUL killing of a person with malice and aforethought. So logically, the word murder cannot be used to describe executions since the death penalty is the law. To do so is an obvious abuse of semantics. Second of all, comparing executions to murders is like comparing incarcerating people to kidnapping. There is a difference between violent crime and punishment. Is there a contradiction in a policeman speeding after a speeder to enforce speeding laws? One displays a serious lack of moral judgment to believe that just because two practices share a physical similarity means that they are morally identical. Law enforcement officials act well within the law when they punish criminals whether it be by charging fines, incarcerating them, or conducting executions, thereby, defending public safety.

What separates crime from punishment, good from evil are not their physical aspects but rather their moral aspects. And moral aspects examine the reasons and motivations behind one’s actions. Abolitionists tend to focus on the death penalty’s physical aspects to demonstrate that it is the same as murder while completely ignoring its moral aspects involved, therefore, demonstrating their total lack of moral coherence.

Still another cliched argument used is that we should value ALL human life, even the most violent and despicable ones. That philosophy indicates that there is nothing more to humanity than the physical traits that identify our species. There is an entire spiritual aspect to humanity that they tend to completely ignore. Anybody can be physically human. All that is, is an accident of genetics. It is the spiritual aspects of humanity that actually define who and what we are. Moral assessments are based on one’s acts and character, not on his race or species, the latter which death penalty opponents often use as an excuse to canonize murderers. Allowing one’s species to hold more weight than his character is the foundation of racism. When a culture develops the moral coherence to recognize humanity as more a spiritual thing than just some physical thing, they will have no excuse to allow, tolerate, or preserve evil and barbarism just because it hides inside a physical human shell.

Personally, I think death penalty opponents have a lot of gall claiming that they are motivated by their “reverence for human life” when the only people they are interested in preserving are those who display the least of it…the very least reverence for human life.

And a final and perhaps most sophomoric cliched argument is that executing a murderer won’t bring back his victim. They never explain how putting murderers in prison is any more capable of such a miracle. That is not the point of executions and it never was. Justice is not about bringing back the dead nor it it about revenge. Justice is about enforcing consequences for one’s own actions to endorse personal responsibility. We cannot expect anyone to take responsibility for their own actions if these consequences are not enforced in full.