Fifty-five thousand persons die in traffic accidents every year in the United States. More than 20,000 persons are murdered. Among young blacks, murder is the most frequent cause of death. Nonetheless, the death penalty is imposed on very few murderers, and of those, fewer than five have been executed per year in the last ten years (1983-2003). Given these facts, it is clear that the main significance of the death penalty both to retentionists and to abolitionists is symbolic: The material effects of capital punishment, as far as society is concerned, are negligible. Its symbolic significance is not. Capital punishment is important as a sign from which one can infer social attitudes and that is meant to express them. Wherefore it is a prominent issue. (Lester, D. 1998)
Abolitionists feel that the death penalty sends the wrong signal to the public and expresses a barbaric and useless vengefulness. They believe that, by executing criminals, the government sanctions the idea that people have the right to deprive other people of life. They contend that nobody should have that right under any circumstances. Death should never be inflicted as punishment on anyone regardless of what crime he has committed.
Most abolitionists would grant that self-defense and war are occasions that justify killing people. But punishment is not self-defense. If a criminal can be executed by the government, the "sanctity of life" is not intact (Locy, T. 2000). The government itself has failed to respect it. People may fall into the habit of violating it. Yet nobody, abolitionists insist, can be so totally and irremediably evil as to lose the right to live. Sure, the criminal has killed wrongfully; but that should not cause the government to execute him, thereby sanctioning killing. Finally, even if anyone could be evil enough to deserve death........
