The Rule of Retributive Justice - Essay Example

Drawing inference from the case of Miller v. Alabama, the application of retributive justice demanded the Miller, a fourteen-year-old boy be tried with the charges of arson and capital crime in the same capacity as an adult. The application of retributive justice does not consider an individual's mental status when committing a crime, thus proposes a blanket cover with which justice is administered equally for equal crime. Application of mandatory life without parole that is applicable in distributive justice can thus be said to be unjust, as it does not give an opportunity for the offender to be cross-examined to ascertain the real intentions of committing a crime (Dreisbach, 2013).

According to the constitution, application of retributive justice is significant as it is based on ensuring that commitment of crimes of the same nature like the one that attracted a capital punishment will prevent commitment of future crimes by the potential offenders. Severe punishment acts as a psychological negative stimulant to avoidance of the crime. Nevertheless, application of retributive justice will infringe the rights of the citizens especially the juvenile who is a life sentence without parole.

These persons will be denied an opportunity for proper development.Discussion 2 Application of retributive justice can be just or unjust depending on the situation when justice is administered. Taking the situation of Karla Faye Tucker, corrective justice as an alternative theory to retributive justice demands that there should be fair compensation to the offender and the victim of a crime without gain for either side. Nevertheless, the victim of Karla had died and could not be compensated. In this regard, corrective justice requires correctional measures to be taken against Karla to ensure she is profitable to society.

According to this theory, the action by Texas to execute Karla despite having achieved corrective measures was unjust (Dreisbach, 2013). Reformative justice sees the response of doing wrong as an opportunity for doing something constructive and not as an opportunity of inflicting punishment on the offender. Reformative justice thus intends to make the offender better than his/ her initial status. In this regard, during her nine years stay in prison, it was conclusively determined that Karla had acted under drug influence and had reformed.

This thus put Karla in a position to be pardoned. The action to execute Karla was thus unjust according to the reformative justice. Restorative justice seeks to heal the wounds that are caused by crime in society. Restorative justice thus seeks to engage the offenders, the victim and the community in a collaborative effort to heal physical, social and psychological wounds. Application of restorative justice thus demanded a collaboration between Karla, the family members of the victim and the American society like the clergy in healing the wound.

This equilibrium had been attained when both the community and the brothers of the victim requested for the pardon of Karla. According to restorative justice, it was thus an unjust act to execute Karla (Dreisbach, 2013). Transformative justice asserts that the justice system should create an opportunity for healing and transformation rather than punishment and retribution. The court decision to execute Karla despite the achievement of healing, transformation thus goes contrary to the principles of transformative justice.

The offender had been transformed from drug abuse and was viewed as harmless to the well-being of the society; thus her execution was unjust.