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The Constitution has a statement to this effect; it’s for the greater good of the greater number of people. That’s ethics. It has nothing to do with codes; it’s what is reasonable. What reasonably means the major amount of survival for the maximum number concerned in the problem. Something ethical might actually mean the destruction of one or two people, if it meant the survival of hundreds or thousands of people.
Capital punishment is neither ethical nor unethical. It happens to be a law, a code. It has to do with a wild, unreasoning effort to protect society, and a great deal of experience has demonstrated that it does not protect society. And all of this evidence to the contrary demonstrates, then, that capital punishment doesn’t work. So therefore it’s unethical conduct, actually, but it’s lawful conduct on the part of a state to administer capital punishment.
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