Debate over death penalty: a humanitarian and utilitarian view

Recently the intermittent debate over death penalty was rekindled in China again. Yao Jiaxin, an undergraduate student majoring in music at the Xi’an Conservatory of Music, was sentenced to death after being found guilty on an intentional homicide. He was charged with stabbing a woman to death after hitting her seriously in a car accident. This case has triggered tremendous controversies. Chinese people and media overwhelmingly supported implementing capital punishment upon him as they hold an opinion that what Yao did is completely intolerable. But a bunch of lawyers and columnists in China are continuously questioning the legitimacy of imposing capital punishment upon him. In my opinion, the cancellation of death penalty is a conspicuous trend all over the world, and I am a staunch supporter of death penalty abolition.

Admittedly, the reason why people are vigorously disposed to support the death penalty is understandable. There is an old epigram in China: a murder must pay his life back. The conception that a murder’s death is a kind of compensation to the victim’s family is entrenched in Chinese traditional culture. Moreover, people reasonably tend to deduce that the death penalty has a deterrent function to prevent future crimes, which means that the possibility of serious crime will decrease due to criminal’s fear toward death penalty. Although these two propositions are plausible, as far as I am concerned, both of them are clearly unfounded.

First, the hackneyed conception that “a murder must pay his life back” is misguided. In order to attack this conception, it is important to crystallize the definition of compensation. Compensation means something received as an equivalent for debt, loss, injury, suffering, lack, etc. in order to normalize victim’s life. In short, the purpose of compensation is normalization. In my opinion, human life is definitely not compensable. In essence, victims can not possibly resurrect and normalize because of the criminal’s death. Actually, the purpose of death penalty is not compensation, but vengeance, which is morally controversial.

Moreover, the deterrent function of death penalty is logically problematic. Basically, it is self-evident that criminal of intentional homicide deserves more draconian punishment than criminal of unintentional homicide. But obviously deterrence is more functional on intentional criminal rather than unintentional criminal (because in my opinion, for rational criminal, 20-years detention is as deterrent as death penalty), which means lesser punishment is needed on intentional criminal than uncontrollable criminal. So this reasoning tries to demonstrate that for criminal like Yao, the deterrent function of death penalty is functionless. The sad fact is, plenty of murders are not rational, so the death penalty is always ineffective.

In conclusion, this essay’s point is that the prevailing mentality of Chinese people’s inclination and dependence on death penalty is pernicious and unhealthy. And this mentality could also be manipulated by the authoritarian government, which is detrimental to the human rights situation in China.