Should Capital Punishment be abolished?

What is the death penalty? It is the highest type of punishment for a murderer or convicted felon to be punished by our government legally, through death. Some question whether the death penalty is a deterrent. How can it not be! Almost no one wants to die. Guilty murderers do everything to avoid being executed. They appeal their cases endlessly; accept plea bargains for life in prison. Is there any reason to believe the death penalty deters murders? From the Opinion Journal June 21, 2002, it was a deadly disaster. Between 1965 and 1980, there was practically no death penalty in the United States. During that time (1965-80), murders in United States doubled from 9,960 to 23,040 per year. Obviously, murder becomes more attractive to potential killers when they know that prison is the worst they can face. Well, I support capital punishment because it has the potential to lower crime rates; it could provide a safe society for us and make us realize the value of life.

Most people have a natural fear of death- it’s a trait man have to think about what will happen before we act.  If we don’t think about it consciously, we will think about it unconsciously.  Think- if every murderer who killed someone died instantly, the homicide rate would be very low because no one likes to die.  We cannot do this, but if the Justice system can make it more swift and severe, we could change the laws to make capital punishment faster and make appeals a shorter process.  The death penalty is important because it could save the lives of thousands of potential victims who are at stake (Bedau, H., 1982). Some people might think that death penalty is inhuman and barbarous, but ask those people who have lost their beloved or whose lives have been tied to a hospital bed because of some barbarous person. I am sure they would be very unhappy to see the person who ruined their lives just getting a few years of imprisonment or mere rehabilitation. Consider the example of the rapist and killer given above. Now, suppose the woman raped was your wife, sister, or daughter. How would you feel knowing that the person who ruined your family is calmly enjoying the benefits of an asylum and an air-conditioned room? Anti-death penalty supporters believe that death penalty is barbarous. Well! So is murder. Death penalty is not revenge. Rather, it is a matter of putting an end to a life that has no value for other human lives. Sentencing a murderer to death is in fact a favor to the society. Despite the moral argument concerning the inhumane treatment of the criminal, we return to the "nature" of the crime committed. Punishment is meted out because of the nature of the crime, devoid of any reference to the social identity of the victim. In "The Death Penalty in America", Adam Bedau wrote, "even in the tragedy of human death there are degrees, and that it is much more tragic for the innocent to lose his life than for the State to take the life of a criminal convicted of a capital offense". I believe that if one cannot value the life of another human being, then one's own life has no value.

Capital punishment is often defended on the grounds that society has a moral obligation to protect the safety and welfare of its citizens. Murderers threaten this safety and welfare. Only by putting murderers to death can society ensure that convicted killers do not kill again. Second, those favoring capital punishment contend that society should support those practices that will bring about the greatest balance of good over evil, and capital punishment is one such practice. Capital punishment benefits society because it may deter violent crime. While it is difficult to produce direct evidence to support this claim since, by definition, those who are deterred by the death penalty do not commit murders, common sense tells us that if people know that they will die if they perform a certain act; they will be unwilling to perform that act. If the threat of death has, in fact, stayed the hand of many would be murderer, and we abolish the death penalty, we will sacrifice the lives of many innocent victims whose murders could have been deterred. But if, in fact, the death penalty does not deter, and we continue to impose it, we have only sacrificed the lives of convicted murderers. Surely it's better for society to take a gamble that the death penalty deters in order to protect the lives of innocent people than to take a gamble that it doesn't deter and thereby protect the lives of murderers, while risking the lives of innocents. If grave risks are to be run, it’s better that they be run by the guilty, not the innocent. Opponents of capital punishment also argue that the death penalty should be abolished because it is unjust. Justice, they claim, requires that all persons be treated equally. From the research of Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez (1995), of 19,000 people who committed willful homicides in the U.S. in 1987, only 293 were sentenced to death. Who are these few being selected to die? They are nearly always poor and disproportionately black. It is not the nature of the crime that determines who goes to death row and who doesn't. People go to death row simply because they have no money to appeal their case, or they have a poor defence, or they lack the funds to being witnesses to courts, or they are members of a political or racial minority.

All in all, I believe that for the sake of saving few criminals we cannot let hundreds and thousands of innocent people to die. Even if we have to take strict action against them, even if it is a capital punishment we should come forward and support it. We have seen that due to the lack of proper and strict actions, thousands of innocent people are raped and murdered every year and the criminals walk freely without any fear of getting punishment. Moreover, countries with stringent criminal and judicial systems always show a decreasing trend in such heinous acts as murder and theft. Take the example of Saudi Arabia where Islamic code of law is strictly implemented; the numbers of such dubious crimes are very low there. So capital punishment should be there in the larger interest of the country at least as a 'necessary evil'.