In every society, a criminal who commits a crime must receive a punishment. In today’s round, with the resolution, "capital punishment is justified," we are to determine whether or not capital punishment is a just punishment. Is the punishment that the criminal receives a just one? In affirming this resolution, I will prove that capital punishment is justified because it can only preserve justice when it exists in a society.

I will now present a few definitions. Capital punishment is defined by the professor Ernest Van DenHaag as "The death penalty for criminals who have committed crimes…seen to be punishable by death which is handed out by a competent government." Murder is "to kill a human being unlawfully." Justified is "legally correct; equitable." From these definitions we see that capital punishment is not murder.

With this in mind I will present my value today: justice. If capital punishment is legally correct, it is justified and upholds the value of justice.

I will now present two observations for a better understanding of the round.

OBSERVATION 1: The idea of capital punishment is different from its usage. For example, an ax has many good uses; yet it can be used unjustly by any person that has the ability to do so. Yet the ax could not be called unjust because the person used it unjustly. The idea of the ax, or its purpose, is still good. On the level of today’s round, the fact that capital punishment can be used unjustly does not make the idea unjust. If we wanted to argue implementation, it would have been mentioned in the resolution. It is the idea of capital punishment that I will argue in today’s round, because implementation does not have any relevance to the idea of the death penalty.

OBSERVATION 2: Capital punishment can only be used as a punishment for murder. This is based on the idea of an equitable punishment, that every criminal punishment must equal the crime. Equitable punishments are punishments that fit the crime. In this sense a murderer must receive the death penalty. Immanuel Kant argued this idea: "If he has committed murder, he must die. Here there is no substitute that will satisfy justice." The only crime capital punishment is equal to is murder, and thus this is the only situation in which it is used.

I will now present three contentions that will prove my value of justice.

CONTENTION 1: A criminal, by murdering another human being, forfeits his own right to life. John Stuart Mill argued that, "We show…most emphatically our regard [for life]…by the adoption of a rule that he who violates that right in another forfeits it for himself. For example, if a person is attacked by another person, the victim has a right and necessity for self-defense, so that he can preserve his own life. He now has a right to take his attacker’s life in order to preserve his own. Just as an individual can kill another individual for his or own safety, a society can take the lives of its murderers because the society is providing equitable punishment. The murderer will lose his life. This leads me to my second contention.

CONTENTION 2: Capital punishment is the only way to ensure the criminal will not endanger society and murder again. For example, let us suppose that a man is given only life imprisonment, as a man by the name of Ted Bundy was. Upon escaping, Bundy took many more lives. People would not have died had imprisonment not been used as a punishment. Another life was lost because capital punishment was not used. The only way to ensure that Dawud Mu’Min or any other violent criminal cannot kill again is by taking away their life. Capital punishment is the only just way to do this.

CONTENTION 3: Capital punishment deters crime. Crime is deterred because the criminals are afraid to die. As a metaphor, rapists are less inclined to attack and rape grown women because they fear getting the AIDS virus ever since the outbreak of AIDS in Nelson Mandela’s "earthly paradise." They fear death, even if it is sub-conscious, but if they fear death they would also fear the death penalty for the obvious reason: if they murder, they will lose their life. Thus crime is deterred. Judge Shauer of the Supreme Court says it best: "The ever present potentiality…of the death penalty…each year saves the lives of scores, if not hundreds of victims."

In a society, capital punishment justly provides equitable punishment because this is the only way that it can be used in a government. When this society uses capital punishment, the criminal forfeits his right to life and thus it can equitably be taken. By using capital punishment, not only do we deter crime by putting fear into the criminals minds, but we make it impossible for a criminal to escape from prison or kill again. Through all of these reasons, capital punishment can only be justified and I therefore affirm the resolution.