Capital Punishment 18 Essay, Research Paper

Capital Punishment

Death has been somewhat of a an ancient manner of discipline reserved for those who commit horrible crimes. As far as the Ancient Laws of China, the death sentence had been established as a punishment for crimes. The first death sentence historically recorded occurred in sixteenth century BC Egypt where the wrongdoer, a member of nobility, was accused of magic and ordered to take his own life (PBS: front line news). Today in most countries, the wrongdoer is put on trial and if convicted would be executed by physicians or officers of the law. Executions are reserved for severe crimes in beliefs that the sentence carried out might bring closure to the victim+s family. Over the years have become more humane. Some people support the idea of executions while others believe it is wrong. For these reasons this topic has stirred up much controversy all over the world; many countries have done away with capital punishment completely while others use it quite frequently. The following are arguments both for and against the death penalty, they will specify both facts and opinions supporting or opposing the use of capital punishment.

Obviously the matter of death is a serious one, many people see it as a form of justice and closure and these people fight to keep the death penalty in effect. Many of the crimes that receive the death penalty are crimes of passion. These crimes are crimes committed among people that are already acquainted with each other; an example of this would be a man killing his wife for the sake of her money. These crimes are committed because of greed and many times the crime is punished by life in prison but many times the murderer is set free on parole after some number of years. Many moralists claim that failure to punish murder by execution is barbarous and brutalizes the community (Criminal Justice, 232). Abolitionists say that the death penalty is legalized murder but when somebody is arrested nobody ever opposes the arrest by saying that it is legalized kidnapping. In capital crimes the law may inflict as punishment on the criminal the same physical act that constituted his crime: we deprive him of his life as he did his victim. In other cases we deprive him of freedom, or money, as he did his victim ( Criminal Justice, 232).

Probably the most talked about argument against the death penalty is the issue of mistakes being made. It is no secret that some men have been executed and then discovered to be innocent but errors would not justify the abolition of the death penalty. Car accidents kill innocent people, so does surgery and some medicine; and so does the death penalty. These incidents are justified because the benefits outweigh the mistakes. In the case of capital punishment the benefits outweigh the mistakes as well.

Equally important are the arguments made by people that oppose the death penalty as a from of justice. A few of the arguments that people have against the death penalty are the possibility of mistakes. Sometimes people are executed and cleared afterwards when the real killer confesses. Some people believed that there is racial and economic discrimination when it comes to the death penalty; people get this idea because most of the inmates on death row are of African descent or are not economically stable.

For similar crimes some are sentenced to death while others are not; does this mean that some judges think that some human lives are more important than others? Some believe that the death penalty is an expression of absolute power of the state. Some people may ask, what makes the state so pure that it has the right to take a human life? Richard Viguerie developed hi position on capital punishment by asking what Christ would say and do about it. |I believe that a strong case can be made, that Christ would oppose the killing of a human being as a punishment for a crimeX said Viguerie (Criminal Justice, 237). His view is supported by the story in the New Testament about the woman sentenced to die by stoning in John 8:7 the quote saying, |He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.X

On account that both sides have been argued, I believe that capital punishment should be abolished. I mostly based my opinion on moral issues but there are some actual facts that helped me come to this conclusion. In the case of mistakes what are we suppose to tell the widow and the children of the victim, you just can+t give an apology and believe that it will be al right. I believe that criminals who are convicted of murder should be given life in prison without the possibility of parole. Those who would be eligible for the death penalty should have the right to choose as Charles Bryant a convicted rapist said, |Even if they could fry me tomorrow, that would be preferable to spending the rest of my life here. This isn+t living it+s just existing.X

Capital punishment will keep being a major debated issue because of the arguments mentioned above plus many others that might not have been thought of yet. Like I stated before, I believe that the punishment of death for a crime should be abolished because there may be some discrimination in the issue and because it+s not right to have innocent people die, even if it+s rare, because of a mistake the state made. I don+t believe that the state or the country has the power to decide whether you live or die nobody should be able to decide that except God or the person itself. Many of the Death Row inmates see the error of their ways and some genuinely mean what they say. One such person was Eugene Belyeu Clifton who said, right before being executed,

“. . . I want to thank all of you that came here today to be with me. I know most of you are here to see me suffer and die but your in for a big disappointment because today is a day of joy. Today is the day I’ll be set free from this pain and suffering. Today I’m going home to Heaven to live for all eternity with my heavenly father Jesus Christ and as I lay here taking my last breath, I’ll be praying for all of you because your here today with anger and hatred in your hearts letting Satan deceive you into believing that what your doing is right and just. God help you, because what your doing here today and what’s in your hearts here today makes you no better than any man or woman on death row across this country. Today your committing murder too! . . . I pray that some day you’ll realize your own mistakes and ask God to forgive you as I have because there is no peace without God’s forgiveness. Amen.”