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Argument: Any discrimination in capital punishment cases can be corrected

Issue Report: Death penalty

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Ernest van den Haag – If and when discrimination occurs it should be corrected. Not, however, by letting the guilty blacks escape the death penalty because guilty whites do, but by making sure that the guilty white offenders suffer it as the guilty blacks do. Discrimination must be abolished by abolishing discrimination – not by abolishing penalties. However, even if…this cannot be done, I do not see any good reason to let any guilty murderer escape his penalty. It does happen in the administration of criminal justice that one person gets away with murder and another is executed. Yet the fact that one gets away with it is no reason to let another one escape.[1]

“The Death Penalty: Morally Defensible?”. Casey’s Critical Thinking1. The death penalty is racist.
2. The death penalty punishes the poor.
These are basically the same argument. What it boils down to is “the death penalty is not applied fairly.” This cannot be an argument against the death penalty. If it were, then it would be an argument against all punishments. To argue that the death penalty is to be abolished because it is not fairly imposed is to admit that if it were imposed fairly it would be okay. This is not an argument against the death penalty but an argument to improve the justice system. Is the system unfair? Fix it. What is unfair is not that the black and poor prisoners get what they deserve. What is unfair is that the rich and white prisoners do not.