t that capital punishment is judicial homicide, a murder sanctioned by the state. If the sovereign state says that taking a life is wrong, how can the state in effect do the same thing to punish the taking of a life? The problem with this argument is that it assumes an individual in society has the same rights as the government in power and in charge of enforcing laws. The citizens of an indirect democracy willingly give up some of the decision making processes to the government. Punishments for crimes in America are decided by a legal system designed by and for the people that it represents. If a person was to hold the death penalty as morally wrong, they would also have to hold the alternative to capital punishment, a jail sentence, as wrong. Is a jail sentence now to be referred to as state sanctioned kidnapping? Should taxes now be called state sanctioned embezzlement? People must give up the responsibilities of law enforcement to the government to create social order. All fifty states have the right to choose whether or not to utilize capital punishment. How can giving society the opportunity to decide it's own definition of morality be wrong? The strongest argument against using capital punishment for retributive purposes, is the argument that capital punishment is cruel and unusual punishment. The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution, condemning cruel and unusual punishment, is used to protest capital punishment. The fallacy of this argument is that it appears to be a red herring argument, one that takes attention away from the facts of the case. When the constitution was drafted, capital punishment was practiced widely in this country, yet it was not specified as wrong or as cruel and unusual. Many of the framers of the constitution endorsed capital punishment, as did philosophers from which the constitution draws from. John Locke went as far to say that murder is not intrinsically wrong. "Everyone, as he is bound ...
