Someone deserves to die. Who gets to kill them?

On 6 October 2026, Nhân Dân reported that the Đồng Nai provincial court had sentenced Nguyễn Đức Anh to death at a first-instance trial for killing a mother and her two children. That alone is enough to bring out the words “deserves to die.” I understand why.

I do not want to repeat details that add to the pain or anger. Nor am I treating a first-instance sentence as the end of every legal procedure. The case raises a question I want to keep asking after the first wave of outrage has passed.

Someone may have done things so terrible that I cannot find any sympathy for them. There is still a distance between that judgment and the conclusion that the state may end their life. Crossing that distance takes an argument, however detestable the person at the other end may be.

Assume the person is certainly guilty

Opposition to capital punishment often begins with wrongful convictions. That is a powerful reason. A system run by people can investigate badly, misread evidence, or bend under pressure. Once a life has been taken, no later correction brings it back.

If the entire position rests on the possibility of a mistake, it immediately faces the question “What about someone who is certainly guilty?” I want to answer that question directly, rather than retreat to the easier case.

Assume the evidence is completely clear. The offender understood what they were doing, acted deliberately, and feels no remorse. Assume they may never safely return to ordinary life. I still think the state must stop short of deliberately killing a person already under its control purely as punishment.

The right to life is not a good-behaviour certificate

If the right to life belongs only to the deserving, the next problem is who issues the certificate. Today the excluded person may be a murderer. Tomorrow the boundary may widen through a new law, a new definition of danger, or a government very sure of its own righteousness.

I understand the right to life as a limit on other people and on public power. It matters most when its holder is unpopular. Decent people usually have less need for a barrier against a crowd determined to punish them.

Keeping an offender’s right to life does not erase their responsibility. They can lose their liberty, owe compensation, be kept away from people they might harm, and receive a severe sentence. Each measure still needs its own justification and limits. Violating someone else’s rights does not hand the state a blank cheque.

I can refuse to forgive someone while also refusing to give the state the power to kill them.

Life is not always what a person values most

There is an objection worth hearing. If someone values freedom or dignity more than continued existence, why insist that they live at any cost? A lifetime behind bars may be a punishment they fear more than death. I do not want to wave that away with “As long as you are alive, you have everything.” In some circumstances, that sounds rather careless.

What someone values most, their rights against others, and what the state may do to them are three separate questions. I can accept that life does not top every personal ranking while opposing the authority to execute. Protection against being killed does not require the claim that everyone always wants to live.

Autonomy also deserves serious discussion. It does not automatically turn every wish into someone else’s duty to fulfil it. That is especially troubling when the person holding the cell keys is also being asked to end the life inside.

Whose life does that button save?

Put two situations side by side. A person is violently threatening someone’s life right in front of you. Months later, that person has been subdued, disarmed, imprisoned, and brought to an execution. It may be the same person, but the justification for force at those two moments is different.

In the first situation, I accept that force carrying a risk of death may sometimes be necessary against a grave and imminent threat, when no less harmful effective option remains. It is a frightening decision, one that needs strict scrutiny, and the force must stop once the threat is under control.

The UN Human Rights Committee’s General Comment No. 36 sets a strict threshold for potentially lethal force in law enforcement. Intentionally taking life must be strictly necessary to protect life against an imminent threat. That boundary helps distinguish stopping danger from punishing someone afterwards.

In the second situation, assume custody is secure. Pressing the execution button does not save a hostage facing immediate danger. It carries out a judgment about what the offender should suffer for a past act. Defending that choice requires an argument about punishment. The justification for self-defence cannot simply be carried over.

The strongest arguments for execution deserve an answer

People who support capital punishment are not necessarily just angry. They may care deeply about justice, safety, and whether the law can still protect innocent people. Describing them all as bloodthirsty would skip the hardest part of the argument.

A life must be paid for with a life

The retributive argument says that an exceptionally grave crime deserves proportionate punishment, even if punishment rehabilitates nobody. I accept the need for condemnation and accountability. Proportionality does not, by itself, settle the form of punishment. The law need not reproduce the act it condemns to express how serious that act was.

The question of limits remains. If society can protect others through secure confinement, deliberately taking another life needs a separate justification. The feeling that someone “deserves” death does not establish that a public institution has the authority to bring it about.

People need to fear the punishment

Deterrence is a question about real effects. I have no basis for claiming that the death penalty has never made anybody hesitate. Choosing a policy requires a harder answer. Does it prevent additional crimes compared with a sufficiently severe alternative, under what conditions, and with evidence strong enough to justify an irreversible loss?

In S v Makwanyane in 1995, South Africa’s Constitutional Court held the death penalty unconstitutional. It examined retribution and deterrence, finding no basis for treating execution as a materially stronger deterrent than life imprisonment. This was a judgment in a particular legal setting, not a ready-made measurement for every country.

For me, “abolishing execution will increase crime” needs evidence, just as the opposite claim does. The less reversible a punishment is, the less comfortable I am defending it on the intuition that it must be useful.

Some people cannot be rehabilitated

I do not want to rest my position on a promise that everyone will eventually become good. Someone may not change. Their risk of serious harm may remain high after many years. Continued separation may then be necessary. “Cannot safely be released” and “must be killed” are still different conclusions.

Article 77 of the Rome Statute allows the International Criminal Court to impose up to 30 years’ imprisonment, or life imprisonment for exceptionally grave cases. Execution is not among its penalties. This governs the international court’s own sentences and does not replace domestic criminal law. It shows that even exceptionally grave crimes can be punished without execution.

Victims cannot be a passing acknowledgement

An essay against execution can easily spend all its words on the offender, then tack on “Of course I care about the victims too.” That is inadequate. Those killed have lost their entire future. Survivors may carry injuries, fear, treatment costs, and an absence in the family long after the trial ends.

Justice owes them concrete work. A thorough investigation. Accountability. Protection for survivors. Enforcement of compensation. Psychological support and treatment that does not repeatedly make them retell the worst part of their lives to be believed. The quality of justice must include these things, alongside the severity of a sentence.

I have no right to demand forgiveness, composure, or agreement from a victim’s family. Their anger does not have to be polite to deserve a hearing. A legal system must still take responsibility for its own limits. It cannot hand the question of lethal authority to a family’s pain and consider the matter settled.

Abolition does not make every prison sentence humane

There is a version of opposition to execution I reject as well. Do not kill them quickly, it says. Make them spend their entire life in terrible conditions. That is what they deserve. If the goal is to stretch suffering until death, the cruelty has merely changed form.

Life imprisonment may be necessary to protect the public. It does not make every condition of confinement legitimate. Prisoners still need medical care, protection from torture, and protection from deliberate psychological destruction. None of this requires affection for them. It requires accountability from the institution holding them.

The UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules set limits on solitary confinement, including a prohibition on indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement. These are minimum standards for the treatment of prisoners. Keeping a body alive is not, on its own, enough to make a system humane.

In the European Court of Human Rights’ approach in Vinter and Others v. the United Kingdom, a life sentence needs a possibility of review and a prospect of release. That does not mean everyone must actually be released, or released immediately. It is a standard within the European Convention system, not a direct description of Vietnamese law.

I favour periodically reassessing the need for confinement and the person’s actual risk. Review is not a gift. It may conclude that someone still cannot be safely released. But that conclusion should be tested against their present condition, rather than assuming a judgment made decades ago knew the whole of their remaining life.

What if they keep killing in prison?

This is a difficult and reasonable objection. A prison is not a magic box. Prisoners can still harm other prisoners or staff. Protecting society cannot be defined so narrowly that it forgets the people inside the fence.

The responsibility is to organise secure custody, assess risk, control access to things that can be used to cause harm, and protect those threatened. An attack in progress may require force to the extent genuinely necessary to stop it. Once the attacker is subdued, that authority does not continue as a licence to execute.

I am not saying this is easy or cheap. Abolition asks more of the system. Difficulty in managing custody does not itself establish that ending a life is a legitimate solution. If every remaining risk becomes a justification, it becomes very hard to find a stopping point for punishment.

Is wanting to die in prison an exercise of autonomy?

If someone sentenced to life says they would rather die, the question becomes more uncomfortable. I do not want to erase their agency altogether. I also do not want to treat every expression of consent in that setting as a fully free choice.

Prisoners depend on the institution for shelter, treatment, safety, and contact with other people. If conditions become unbearable and someone asks to die, the state cannot simply step aside and say “They chose it.” It has to ask what it did to produce that choice.

Canada has specific guidance on medical assistance in dying for people in custody. It requires medical eligibility, decision-making capacity, and a voluntary request free of external pressure. Imprisonment alone does not establish eligibility. It is a separate medical process, not an option to exchange a prison sentence for death.

I still have open questions about euthanasia and medical assistance in dying. How voluntary can a decision be when nearly all of life is controlled by others? Who assesses that voluntariness, and how independent are they from the institution? Have adequate treatment and decent living conditions been provided before the wish to die is accepted?

Even if I later reach a different view about autonomy at the end of life, that will not automatically settle the question of execution. A medical decision based on a patient’s circumstances and a decision to kill as punishment rest on different grounds. Combining them makes it harder to examine either properly.

Vietnam is narrowing the scope. Where should it stop?

Law No. 86/2025/QH15 removed the death penalty for eight offences, effective from 1 July 2025. In June 2026, a proposed Criminal Code revision described removing it for another six offences. The August 2026 parliamentary discussion still concerned a draft law. Enacted changes and proposals need to remain distinct, rather than being added together as if both were already law.

Narrowing the scope is a significant direction. But this essay’s question does not end with which offences remain on the list. It concerns the principle behind the list. If a person is under control and can be held securely, why should the gravity of their crime authorise the state to deliberately take their life?

Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is not simply an unconditional death-penalty ban for every state party. I am arguing for a limit the law should move towards. A moral position should not be presented as though existing law already says exactly that.

The boundary I want to keep

I oppose the state deliberately ending the life of someone under its control purely as punishment. I accept the need to protect others against grave and imminent danger, including when a last-resort measure may be lethal. Once that danger has been stopped, that justification must stop too.

This position does not promise that everyone can be rehabilitated, every victim can be made whole, or prisons will automatically become decent. It brings demanding responsibilities for secure custody, living conditions, review, and support for victims. Abolishing execution while abandoning those responsibilities would leave much of the problem unresolved.

Perhaps the hardest part is keeping a principle when it protects someone I have no desire to protect. A limit on power that only works while I feel sympathy is a fragile one. When it is needed most, it takes the day off.

I can stand with victims, demand severe accountability, and still stop short of granting the power to kill. “This person deserves to die” may say a great deal about my revulsion. “Who has the authority to kill?” makes me think about the system that will remain after the anger passes.

Sources for thinking further

These sources help check facts and compare arguments. Each has its own legal scope. The position I draw from them is my reading, not a conclusion jointly declared by every document.

- NhanAZ - 06.10.2026