Ed Koch Shows Us an Example of a Fallacious Argument

When people argue passionately for or against a concept, they often create partially fallacious statements or arguments to support their position on the issue. When Edward Koch made his statement in support of the death penalty, despite the attempt at a rational appeal, even he made a few fallacious arguments in an attempt to persuade his audience.

In his first point in support of the death penalty, wherein he actually rejects opponents' emotional appeals, he draws a parallel between the extreme measures that people employ to cure cancer with the death penalty. Just as chemotherapy may be considered radical, and may one day be considered by future doctors as barbaric, capital punishment is the tool we have now to prevent murderers from murdering again. However, this is a false analogy, in that capital punishment is being compared to those techniques used to cure a bodily ill-except in this case, the 'cure' is for a societal ill. But capital punishment does not prevent murder itself. It would have been just as false to conclude that the best way to cure cancer would be to kill the cancerous patient. After all, then the patient would not have to worry about having a relapse and developing new tumors.

Ed Koch's second point in favor of capital punishment brings up another example of a fallacious argument. Herein he cites statistics illustrating the U.S.' horrific murder rates in relation to other major democracies to show the need for the death penalty in the U.S. He basically states that in other countries, murder rates are low, so therefore they do not need the death penalty. In the U.S., the murder rates are high, so therefore we do need the death penalty. It would be just as easy to take this false cause and flip it, and to say that murder rates are higher in the U.S. because of state-supported capital punishment, and lower in other democracies because the death penalty is not state-sanctioned. Either way, the argument remains circular.

The next point includes an appeal to authority. This fallacious argument is often difficult to fight off, since we allow experts to inform us in all aspects of our lives, and it is after all much easier to allow others to do some of the thinking we have little time for. Koch refers to one man's citation of a single study which concluded that "the record fails to show" that application of capital punishment runs the risk of executing innocent persons. No other evidence is given to substantiate the argument; Koch relies on this one oblique reference to show conclusively that that risk is nonexistent. The evidence that Koch offers his listeners and readers is sketchy and very unscientific.

Rather difficult to catch is the false dilemma that we are next presented with. Opponents of capital punishment state that it cheapens the value of human life. Ed Koch then describes a situation, wherein he states that if the penalties for rape were lowered, it would essentially say to the victims that their suffering was not that important, and that the physical and emotional scars left by their attackers did not warrant much punishment. Additionally, it would promote the likelihood of further attacks by the perpetrators if their punishment is not severe enough to teach them a lesson. Therefore, backing off and not demanding the death penalty "signals a lessened regard for the value of the victim's life." The implication here is that if one does not support the death penalty, one does not hold the victim's life in as high a regard as a death penalty advocate does. One is, essentially, valuing the life of the murderer over the value of the murdered. The argument is oblique, but felt nonetheless.

Further fallacious arguments could be extracted from Ed Koch's rather persuasive speech, as he attempts to use the most appealing arguments to sway his audience. But this is human nature, to cajole and wheedle, bluster and confuse, in order to cause others to draw similar conclusions.

Koch, Edward. Speech: "Death and Justice: How Capital Punishment Affirms Life." 1985