Death Penalty Debate: Gary Graham's Execution

An inmate by the name of Gary Graham drew several protestors to a Huntsville unit in the year 2000; they were there in opposition to Graham’s execution. This day finally came after nineteen years on death row and four appeals. With him being a repeat offender he was not new to this side of the justice system, but after being put in prison he became a political activist who worked to abolish the death penalty. People who stood against his execution argued that his case still had reasonable doubt, he was rehabilitating himself, and his punishment would cause major harm to his family. Aside from that you have the advocates arguing that you have to set example for others, so you must carry out the punishment that was given, and while the execution may harm the offender’s family it will give the victims’ families closure for his crimes.

He was one of the few to introduce the concept of Utilitarianism; he argued that the rightness of an action should be based on the amount of good it caused or the amount of pain it avoided. With that being such an uncertain concept to calculate, he came up with the Hedonistic calculus. It was where the ‘utile’ served as the standard unit of good that resulted from the action. But there were also several other aspects that had a role in the act that had to be taken into consideration as well; who would be affected, the intensity, duration, certainty, and the propinquity. As for a situation involving several people the fecundity, purity, and the reach of the action also had to be taking into consideration. It was a system that told his beliefs about justice so much so that several times he campaigned for very progressive ideas at the times: women’s equal rights, animal rights, and more effective directed punishments for injustice. He mentions in his book “The Rationale of Punishment” how he is against the death penalty on two separate