Capital punishment is supported on both utilitarian (deterrence) and retributive grounds. Empirical evidence does not support the contention that capital punishment deters murders. The retributive argument that capital punishment is the just sanction for premeditated murder is supportable, although it has been challenged by abolitionists, who argue that it violates the principle of right to life, condones murder by the state, and mistakenly implies that the lives of the victim and the offender are equally valuable. According to the abolitionists, capital punishment provides for a tortuous interval between the sentence and its execution, precludes the rectification of mistaken guilty verdicts, is applied in a biased way toward the poor and racial minorities, and is held in contempt by society (as evidence by the disgust held for the job of executioner). All of these arguments can be countered in maintaining that capital punishment is the just desert for certain forms of murder, providing its use is properly regulated so as to limit the chances of a mistaken or biased verdict. The only justified argument for the abolition of capital punishment is that in an absolute sense it is cruel and morally wrong. On this point, there are subjective perspectives not amenable to challenge by objective argument. A total of 28 footnotes are given.