Last week saw the
hangings of the 4 men in Delhi who gang-raped a 23-year-old student on a bus in 2012. (The unnamed woman later died of her injuries.)
The case shocked the world and sparked a revolution about female safety within India (although women there are still raped at the rate of 1 every 20 minutes.
The family of the victim expressed their relief that the executions were finally happening after many delays, which is understandable.
But is the death penalty ever the answer?
It was the first time in 5 years that capital punishment has been carried out in India.
People either think that the death penalty is morally wrong, or they don’t.
To my mind, the hangings in India are as fundamentally unethical as a lethal injection in a US jail.
I say that, while feeling nothing but disgust and outrage at what those men did, and my heart breaks for the young woman and her family.
I understand why people think that, for certain crimes, the death penalty is justified.
However, there can’t be a sliding ethical scale for the death penalty.
The dial must stay stuck, or it’s meaningless.
I would argue that it could never be justified, even for appalling crimes.
Source: The Guardian, Opinion, March 22, 2020
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde