Van Den Haag's Arguments Against The Death Penalty

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The death penalty is one of the most controversial topics in today’s society, especially in America, and will continue to be in the foreseeable future. Van Den Haag has an interesting approach to the idea of capital punishment. He outlines his argument into five standard objections to capital punishment.
Haag’s first objection is the argument of maldistribution. This claim is one of the most used against the death penalty. This opposition states capital punishment is applied in a discriminatory way to minorities and men specifically. Haag counters this assertion by expressing whoever receives the punishment of death unquestionably deserves it, and no wrong is done to that individual. He extends this examination by stating the wrong lies in those who deserve the death penalty but did not receive punishment. Haag makes a simple suggestion on how to diminish the …show more content…
This allegation says that capital punishment has harmful consequences, a high financial cost to taxpayers, undeserved suffering awaiting execution, and the legitimization of the process. It is easy to see flaws in this claim, as Haag does, he starts off simply stating these objections are seemingly pointless in the shadow of justice. He continues by acknowledging one of the assertions of the idea that executions are therefore endorsing killing by higher forces. This statement is often seen as ironic, the justice system kills people for killing people, therefore society normalizes the situation. But there is still the object of finance that is a frequent argument. “The costs associated with death penalty trials that took place between 1983 and 2006 averaged about $1 million more per trial than the costs of average non–death penalty homicide trials” (Arthur Alarcon). The Judicial System spending $1 million on the average convicted death penalty felon is outrageous. America could be saving an excessive amount of money by abolishing the death
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