Death Penalty, on the view of Kantian Ethics

There is ongoing crucial debate within the criminal justices system as to the moral status of the Death Penalty. Death Penalty, or known as capital punishment, is the killing of a person by judicial process as a punishment for an offence. On the view of Katian ethics, a classic expression of the retributivist position on the death penalty is Immanuel Kant's statement that if an offender has committed murder, he must die. In this case, no possible substitute can satisfy justice. For there is no parallel between death and even the most miserable life, so that there is no equality of crime and retribution unless the perpetrator is judicially put to death. For Kant, the death penalty was a conclusion of the argument for justice. As a person of dignity, the victim derserves to have the offender harmed in proportion to the gravity of the crime, and as a person of high worth and responsibility, the offender is deserving of the death penalty. Accordingly the torturer should be tortured exactly to the severity that he tortured the victim, the rapist should be raped, and the cheater should be harmed to a degree equal to that suffered by the one cheated. Criminals deserve such punishment in accordance with the priciple of proportionality.