Capital punishment is a controversial topic in the world especially in the Western countries. Countries such as United States of America, India and China give the penalty in the severe murder cases. The human rights activists however continue to complain on the disadvantages of capital punishment in the judicial system. My hypothesis is that Capital punishment should be abolished and discontinued immediately.
In this paper I will discuss both sides of the argument against and in support of capital punishment and show how the cons far outweigh the cons. There are arguments from the economic angle that it is highly expensive for a prisoner to serve a life sentence than be sentenced to the death penalty.
The people of that country end up paying higher taxes to enable the State to maintain. It is reasoned that these funds could have been used in other more profitable economic sectors such as education and health. Secondly, capital punishment is reserved for the most heinous of crimes in the judicial systems.
The more cruel and cold-blooded the crime, the more an individual should suffer for his crime. In the Bible, in the Old Testament, the only people who were killed for their crimes were the ones who had committed the greatest crimes one of them being murdering their neighbors. The death penalty therefore fits the crime.
The officers in the judicial system argue that the death penalty acts as an effective deterrent to other potential criminals. As no one in the world wants to die, the potential criminals will think twice about committing heinous crimes. The criminals who face the death penalty are a potential and a serious danger to the other criminals and other workers such as wardens and doctors in the prisons.
Since they have killed in cold blood before, the probability of them committing another murder is much higher. It would therefore be better to get rid of them. The death penalty assures the public of safety in that the prisoner will never get out on parole. It is argued that with imprisonment there is the possibility of the hardened criminal getting out and committing other crimes in the society. Prison time may not contribute to positive rehabilitation of the criminal.
I will look at the arguments one by one and demystify the arguments one by one. They are shallow and not conclusive. Beginning with the social costs, research has shown that most cases where the death penalty is handed out, most of them are appealed in the higher courts. More costs are therefore incurred and more procedures have to be taken care of.
The cost-effectiveness of the death penalty is therefore brought down. The appeals in the death penalty cases are usually many and cause the social costs of the cases to be even more expensive (Warden, 2009). The death penalty is a cruel form of punishment and it is actually barbaric. The executions lower the dignity of the individual. Every individual has the right to live.
The State therefore commits an ethical error in killing an individual. Two wrongs do not make a right at all. The State is expected to protect the right of an individual to life. There is also the possibility of improvement of behavior. The death penalty does not give an individual the opportunity to repent or be remorseful of what he did.
It takes way the opportunity from the individual. There have also been no concrete evidence or research findings that have proven that that the death penalty has deterred potential criminals from committing a murder. A better deterrent for the potential criminals would be life imprisonment. The restricted freedom and lower social living conditions serve to discourage the criminal more from committing a crime.
The most important argument against the capital punishment comes to the issue of miscarriage of justice (Haines, 1992). There have been cases where an individual was executed only for evidence to emerge later that it was a wrongful execution. Prisoners waiting for appeals on death row have been exonerated and released.
The death penalty therefore leads to unnecessary deaths. There is no absolute guarantee that the state will carry out justice in the correct manner each time. The justice process is like any process, it is subject to errors, bias, judgmental errors and other flaws.
Knowing that there is a probability that the individual may be innocent should the State engage in issuing out the death penalty? In United States of America, prisoners stay on the death row for years waiting for judges to decide the many appeals that their lawyers have filed.
Most of the appeals are usually not valid since the lawyers are looking for a chance to simply delay the execution as they look for more evidence that will exonerate their client or change the key elements of the case. The loss of an innocent life is not worth it.
Life imprisonment should therefore be preferred. It gives an opportunity for justice to prevail in certain cases and the prisoner’s life is spared.
There are also cases where the individual killed the victim but is should have been ruled as manslaughter instead of murder. The truth of the matter is that the only people who know what happened are the deceased and the criminal. At the courts however it all comes to the expertise and skills of the defense lawyers and the prosecution in proving their stance in the case.
The probability of someone being convicted of murder instead of manslaughter is therefore high. There is also the emotional turmoil that the family and friends goes through before and after the execution. The individuals have to come to terms with the possibility that their loved one could be guilty of a heinous crime.
Most people concentrate on the feelings of the victim’s family never thinking of the turmoil the prisoner’s family is going through. The public is always concerned about the family of the victim finding closure and being able to move on with their lives.
It is easier for them to heal faster than when they think of the criminal being in prison still alive. However, what if there is a miscarriage of justice? The criminal’s family goes through so much emotional trauma accepting that their family member was killed by the State for a crime that he did not commit.
Conclusion
Looking at all the arguments mentioned above, it is clear that the death penalty should cease operating in any country in the world in this century. It is a traditional form of punishment and now with the government officials being enlightened on the ills or consequences, it should cease immediately. The information and statistics against capital punishment is overwhelming and should not be ignored at all.
Works Cited
Haines, Herb. “Flawed Executions, the Anti-Death Penalty Movement, and the Politics of Capital Punishment” Social Problems, 39.2 (1992):125-138.
Warden, Rob. “Reflections on Capital Punishment” Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy,2.1(2009): 229-259.