The moral imperative of the death penalty (part 2)

Last week, I argued that the death penalty should be preserved as an option for a society confident of its decency and its way of life —as ours has a right to be — in order unapologetically to assert its moral demands against its most grotesque criminals. In the comments section to that post, a number of serious-minded objections were raised. I want to discuss two of them here.

— Error is inevitable, so if we don’t end the death penalty, sooner or later we’re going to execute an innocent person.

That’s correct (or I’m willing to assume it is), but its tacit assumption isn’t. The tacit assumption is that the death of an innocent person at the hands of the state is a price a decent society must refuse pay.