For many years now I’ve been arguing that the only reasonable, consistent position for libertarians to take on capital punishment is to oppose it. If the state can’t be trusted to deliver mail on time or effectively manage public works projects, certainly it can’t be trusted to decide who should and should not be put to death. In a recent column, Joseph Sobran eloquently sums up this position.
My own view is that, other things being equal, a murderer richly deserves to die. But you can say that and still believe that the state shouldn’t execute him. The state has amply proved, over the centuries (and especially the twentieth century), that it can’t be trusted with life-and-death power over anyone. It can’t be trusted with other powers either: the power to draft soldiers, the power to tax, the power to control the currency. It has abused every power ever entrusted to it … The modern state itself is a criminal enterprise. And though the death penalty is intrinsically just and does deter, we don’t want justice enforced by criminals.
Well said.
Source:
The Death Penalty. Joseph Sobran, LewRockwell.Com, October 11, 2000.