Abstract
Death penalty also known as Capital Punishment is a form of formal deterrence which is being used by many countries to punish capital offenders. Death penalty has been used from times of ancient government such as the government of the great Babylon. However, there have several proponents against the infliction of death penalty. These proponents believe that every human being, however villain they are, deserve some level of humanity in their treatment. They believe that by imposing death penalty, offenders may end committing more crimes as a result of fear of being caught and subjected to death. They also believe that there is no evidence that death penalty can result into low levels of crime activities. However, pro-death penalties believe that this is the only way to instill fear on the will-be offenders because nobody fears anything more than death; as a result there will be a reduction on future instances of criminal activities.
Introduction
Death penalty also known as Capital Punishment is a form of formal deterrence which is being used by many countries to punish capital offenders. Death penalty has been used from times of ancient government such as the government of the great Babylon. Back in the 18th century B.C in Babylon, King Hammaurabi of Babylon codified death penalty and enumerated 25 different crimes that were to be punished by death. Even in the 7th century B.C, the Athens passed Draconian Code which provided that the only punishment to all sins was death penalty (McCord 21). Death penalty is one topic which as both been supported and opposed with the same vehemence. Supporters believe that death penalty is the most severe form of deterrence for the most severe crimes. On the other hand, the critics to death penalty argue that you can end up killing a wrong person. This paper is going to examine the opposing views on the matter of death penalty.
Views for Death Penalty
Proponents of death penalty believe that some capital crimes such as rape, treason, torture, murder and kidnapping should only be penalized by death. They believe that this assertion by other people that death penalty is immoral, that the government should not take anybody’s life, is just a mere faith but never a fact. Death penalty is a way of honoring a human dignity. Any human should have the freedom to control their destiny. Death penalty therefore treats the defendants as a free thinking individual who has the right to control his own destiny. That every human has the free will to direct their fate for good or for ill; therefore, by undertaking death penalty, the defendant is not treated like an animal but rather like a human with a moral sense (Kuziemko 51).
Even though death penalty has been viewed as an inhumane method of deterrence which subjects the defendants to a lot of pain, measures have been taken to ensure that the capital punishment is undertaken in a way that result to as little pain has possible. By the use of methods such electrocuting, hanging in public or setting a savage animal to the offenders, they were several claims that the victims were undergoing unbearable levels of pain that which is immoral and inhuman. With the new methods such as lethal injections which do not leaver the offender with any pain, no one can argue of the physical pain. As a matter of fact, the offenders die more peacefully than the average death of a human being. At least this will compensate for the emotional pain that the offender may go through.
There have been arguments that a system can make a mistake and end up executing an innocent person. What is important to understand is that there is no system on earth that can operate with 100% certainty. We have seen instances of real murderers going scot-free, living the victims even more broken. The system should therefore rely on the available evidence and human testimonies as the form of proof. The system has also been very vigilant in ensuring that such mistakes never occur. As a matter of fact, since 1976 when death penalty was reactivated, there has been no credible evidence that there has been anybody executed wrongfully (McCann 17).
Views against Death Penalty
The moral question on death penalty should not be about whether or not the offender deserves a death sentence, but it rather the question should be whether the government has got the moral right to kill anybody. There is a belief that racial discrimination has been so evident in the in the matter of death penalties. Currently, out of all the people who are in death raw in in the United States, 45% of them are African-Americans (Hood & Hoyle 19). The use of death penalty is a criminal justice which treats those who are rich better than those who are poor. This therefore means that death sentence leads to an immoral condition. One should always be judged according to their character but not the color of their skin of the amount of money they have. With such levels of discriminations in death penalties, its aim to deter crime will never be achieved, but rather it just leads to immorality. A method of deterrence that does not practice equal and just administration of punishment should be avoided by all means.
Death penalty is the most brutal form of punishment that no human being should undergo. The wrath of death punishment treats humans as though they were just some objects or animals to be discarded at will. There is that fundamental premise that everybody, including even the vilest of men, should always be treated with some level of dignity. No human should have the right to take others life. Death sentence also violates the Eighth and the Fourteenth amendment, therefore any deterrence that violates the provision of law is illegal on itself (Donohue & Wolfers 43).
Some proponents of death penalty believe that death penalty causes fear among the will-be murderers or rapists, and as a result reducing the instances of capital crimes. What is important to note is that there is note is that there is no evidence that the application of capital punishment reduces crimes. If you compare states in the US that do not have death penalty and those that have death penalty, there is no evidence that the former has more instances of capital crimes than the latter. Even those states that have changed their laws to abolish death penalty, there is no evidence that the rate of capital crimes have increased since the abolishment. As a matter of fact, death penalty can increase gravity of their criminal offences. When individual rapes a minor, they might go ahead to kill their victims because they do not want a witness that will connect them to the raping case (Li 89). They may do so because they fear the possibility of being sentenced to death
The use of death as a form of capital offence punishment can lead to innocent people being killed. Even though there is always a time given before the offender is killed, the time may not be enough to be sure that the person was really guilty. We have seen instances where people who were sentenced to life imprisonment are freed upon the coming of new evidence that exonerates them. These pieces evidence sometimes even appear twenty or more into their imprisonment period. If the same person could have been sentenced to death, they could have been killed long before the evidence come into the surface, and there will be nobody to exonerate because you will have just killed an innocent person. Since the reinstatement of death penalty in 1976, more than 87 people who were in death raw have been exonerated since they were later proven to be innocent (Edwards et al. 113). This means that for every seven people in a death raw, one person is innocent. It is therefore imperative that death sentence be abolished.
Reference
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Hood, Roger, and Carolyn Hoyle. The death penalty: A worldwide perspective. OUP Oxford, (2014).
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Li, Lifeng. "Sentence of life without parole: Proposal for the revision of Chinese criminal law in the context of the elimination of death penalty." Frontiers of Law in China 5.3 (2010): 424-434.
Edwards, Griffith, et al. "Drug trafficking: time to abolish the death penalty." (2009): 322-326.
