Capital punishment refers to inflicting death to offenders who are convicted of capital crimes. During the medieval times, criminals sentenced to capital punishment were put to death using gruesome methods such as decapitation, burning, stoning and quartering by horses (Marzili, 2008).
However, such methods stopped being used, as they were considered too heinous. Instead, methods such as hanging, lethal injection and electric chair are widely used today as they are considered mild and human. Humanitarians led to the review of many killing methods for offenders as they argued that the methods were inhuman bad torturous. Such debates about capital punishment invoked moral issue in killing. People are divided on the issue of capital punishment on the moral ground.
Those against it urge it is wrong to kill a human being even if they are being punished for committing capital crimes. Conversely, capital punishment proponents’ support the practice claiming it helps to deter would be killers from attacking innocent people. This paper will focus on moral issues surrounding capital punishment and argue that capital punishment is morally wrong.
Capital punishment is used to deter people from committing the crime of murder. Its supporters say that killing murderers is sending a message to the society that killing is wrong. They argue that capital punishment deters potential murderers from committing crime and hence protect the lives of innocent members of society who would otherwise have fallen into the hands of these potential murderers. However, studies show that capital punishment does not lower homicide rates (Andre & Velasquez, n.d.).
It therefore means that capital punishment does not serve its intended purpose and it is morally wrong to use it to deter crime while statistics show that it does not help in crime deterrence. Moreover, capital punishment does not make the society safer as those who commit murders still do with the full knowledge that their actions may result in capital punishment (Guernsey, 2009).
Hence, the offenders should be punished with other forms of severe punishment that lie within our moral principles of respecting human life sanctified (Cesare Beccaria in his 1767 essay wrote that it is absurd that a state that condemns murder would then go ahead and commit murder by sentencing offenders to capital punishment (Guernsey, 2009).
If murderers are to be condemned to death for killing, should the state also not be sentenced to death for killing people? Moreover, those who get capital punishment are condemned because they have a motive in killing.
However, research shows that most murders occur in a spur of temporary insanity or in the heat of the moment and those who commit these heinous acts often have no control of their actions, as most of the murders are tragic. However, this does not mean that they should not be punished. Capital punishment is also a form of premeditated death as the action is planned for, does it mean that the state has the right to premeditate deaths for some of its citizens because they are guilty of crimes.
The American constitution in the Eighth Amendment prohibits all forms of unusual and cruel punishment. Capital punishment is cruel and thus fails when put to test against this amendment. It fails because it is not consistent with the fundamental human right, which respects the right to life and the dignity of human beings.
Killing an offender does not respect their dignity, which is an inherent right that cannot be lost just because one has committed murder or any other heinous crime. The right to life is an alienable right that cannot be forfeited. This means that even when a person commits a crime they retain their human value.
The right to life should be respected by all without the exception of executioners in a justice system (Nathanson, 1987, p.8). However, some will argue that murderers also did not preserve the dignity and worth of their victims. True they did not but killing them would bring the justice system to the same level as the murderers because killing can never be right especially when other forms of punishment can be used.
Capital punishment denies the wrongdoer his or her dignity and value as a human being. It is moral to uphold the dignity of human life and by not giving capital punishment to offenders. In such cases, we rise above and show our respect for human life even when the circumstances demand that we kill those who have killed. Hegel and Kant argue that taking the life of a human being is wrong
As long as the murderer is alive, no matter how bad the conditions of his life may be, there are always some values he can experience and realize (Primoratz, 1989, p.126).
Furthermore, allowing those who deserve capital punishment to remain alive can give them a chance to rectify their behavior through rehabilitation and later on, they can live productive lives and benefit the society. Thus, by sentencing offenders the society loses on the benefits that it might have gained from the rehabilitated offenders.
Upholding capital punishment cheapens human life. Inflicting capital punishment makes it legal to kill yet killing is never right, as two wrongs cannot make a right. Even the killing of murderers diminishes the society as a whole because its benefits are few if any and thus it is immoral to support such a practice. Killing offenders shows that a society does not respect human life by endorsing that killing is a way of solving some social problems. The benefits of capital are illusionary and result in bloodshed and moral degeneration of the society.
Sometimes wrongful convictions are made by courts of law. If such people were sentenced to death penalties, there would be no way of undoing this wrong; as death is final. Cases of wrongly convicted persons have been reported. Some have been exonerated through DNA evidence that they did not commit the crimes they were accused of in the first place.
Moreover, some people can be convicted of murder when they deserve to be convicted of manslaughter because the circumstances leading to the murder may be unclear and only truly known by the deceased and the victim. Thus, one will be sentenced depending on how skillful their defense lawyers are in the case.
In such circumstances, some people maybe wrongful convicted due to circumstantial evidence or inadequacies in defense while others get away with murder. For instance, about forty per cent of capital punishment conviction cases have been found to have contained errors and taken back to courts. About fifty cases on death row have been proved innocent and taken off the death row, had the fifty been killed they would have died in vain (Dieter, 1994).
Such discrepancies should be ground for abolishing the practice because it is not foolproof and hence not morally acceptable. It means that capital punishment denies such people who are wrongly accused the due process of the law and an opportunity to reverse the conviction through new evidence and this is wrong. The fact that there is a chance of convicting an innocent person to death penalty should be enough to stop the practice.
Capital punishment is wrong as have shown that it is given unfairly to offenders depending on ones race and ethnicity. Many people of color are given capital punishment than whites yet they make up a small portion of the population in a country such as the United States (Dieter, 1994).
The justice system does not protect all the people equally and thus denies all citizens the constitutional right of equal protection. The belief that the justice system does not offer equal protection to its citizens shows the society does not have respect for law. A justice system should punish all offenders equally regardless of their race; social or economic status as doing otherwise is immoral as it only promotes racial discrimination.
The retributive theory urges that punishment should be equal to a crime. However, it is not easy to determine an equal punishment to murder in a capital punishment. Secondly determining a proportional punishment in proportional retributivism fails as it does not dictate that those who commit murders be killed.
The idea of punishing a criminal with an equal punishment is absurd because if one rapes another person should they also be raped. If they were raped as a form of punishment, what would that make the one who delivers that punishment if not equal to the rapist? Retribution does not justify capital punishment, as morally killing is not and will never be a good thing (Nathanson, 1987).
Capital punishment takes a lot of time and in the process uses many resources through trials and retrials. The due process in such cases takes a long time to try to eliminate the instances of making wrongful convictions. The cases drain a country economically as a big chunk of the budget is devoted to them.
Such money would have been used in other uses projects such as health or education. Capital punishment cases are expensive and time consuming as judges take long to determine them. People who seek justice through the cases become frustrated with the long waits (Dieter, 1994).
My stance on capital punishment is that it is morally wrong. God is the giver of life and he alone should take it away. When the justice system punish offenders using capital punishment they are playing God and this cannot be morally right. Capital punishment is just plain homicide and is immoral besides being degrading.
The punishment has not protected innocent people or deterred potential murderers and thus it is not a good form of punishment. Moreover, capital punishment is mostly given to the poor uneducated and people of color who make up a small percentage of the population while white offenders who commit similar acts are more likely to avoid capital punishment.
A punishment that leads to discrimination should be done away with in favor of fair punishments. Punishment ought to be acceptable according to the moral standards of the people and because capital punishment raises mixed reactions with people on the extreme sides, it should be abolished, as it does not stand the moral principal that prohibits killing. The cost of capital punishment is exorbitant and takes long time in courts.
The money spent in capital punishment cases can be put to better use and save the people involved in the cases the agony of waiting for the cases to conclude. People should stand up and denounce capital punishment because if it is intended to deter crime it has not done a good job and fails the moral test.
Reference List
Andre, C. & Velasquez, M. (n.d.). Capital punishment: Our duty or doom?. Web.
Dieter, R. Secondary smoke surrounds the capital punishment debate, Criminal Justice Ethics 13 (2), 82-84.
Guernsey, J.B. (2009). Death penalty: fait solution or moral failure? New York: Twenty First Century Books.
Marzili, A. (2008). Capital punishment. New York: Infobase Publishing.
Nathanson, S. (1987). An Eye for an Eye? New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Primoratz, I. (1989). Justifying Legal Punishment. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International.