Capital Punishment Is a Moral Ignominy - Research Paper Example

Capital Punishment Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Thesis statement 2 Executive Summary 2 Arguments for the death penalty 3 Criminal Ostracized 3 Capital punishment cuts down Costs 3 Retributive justice 4 Deterrence 4 Arguments against the death penalty 5 Execution of genuine people 5 Distress for the immediate family 5 It is not humane 6 Conclusion 7 References 10 Thesis statement The current practice of capital punishment is a moral ignominy. Executive Summary Every just society is established on a specific standpoint; every person has the fundamental right to life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness. This is the construct within which, forces involved discuss capital punishment along the following lines: some acts are so despicable and heinous that the community cannot stand. This therefore invalidates the perpetrator’s right to life. A community founded on moral principles has firm requirements. The right to belong to a community is not absolute, but upon adherence to those requisites. The concession of living and pursuing the good life in society has also its conditions. A behavior that undermines the character of a moral community also annuls this pursuit. The critical basis that buttresses the community requires that each citizen honor the legal entitlements of others. The sheer and deliberate denial of life and opportunity to others makes one to forfeit one’s own claim to sustained membership in the community, which so flagrantly desecrates the values. The preservation of the morals of the community demands that the shaking of the foundation of its reality is of paramount importance. The sanctity of life in a moral community must be so highly esteemed that those who act in breach of this, only injure themselves for they render their own right to membership void. Those who infringe the personhood of others, especially if they do this in alarming persistence, thereby making it a habit, must pay the definitive penalty. This punishment is in order to maintain the community whose groundwork is in utter violation. We can discuss whether some non-mortal method sufficiently works as a fitting alternative for the death penalty. However, the set standard of judgment is whether the punishment equals the crime and satisfactorily brings the morals of the community to honors and not to disrepute. Arguments for the death penalty Criminal Ostracized Capital punishment ensures permanent removal of the nastiest criminals from our society. It should prove a much safer method of correcting behavior. It also shows that the supposed criminal is subject to hatred. There is no punishment known to a firmer impact on a victim than capital punishment; not even incarceration. It is apparent that when criminals die, their ability to commit any further crimes disintegrates with them. Capital punishment cuts down Costs Money is an exhaustible commodity and the government may very well think on how better it can spend monetary resources than on the long-term incarceration of murderers, rapists, and other capital offenders. These costs may include the costs of executing an offender over life in prison and the cost incurred in the rigorous legal system, which entails endless appeals and delays in arriving at the verdict of a death sentence. Supporters of capital punishment group up in three categories; the retributivists, who claim that for the most heinous crimes, the penalty of death is morally justifiable or perhaps even required, the consequentialists and the welfarists. The later argue from the human rights point of view. They contend that the deterrent consequences of capital punishment are important and that they justify the penalty. The last category, the Consequentialists, defends capital punishment by the assumption that capital punishment is morally permissible, as opposed to being a moral obligation (Popper, 2009). With regard to Popper’s view, we then get the standpoint on which to base the support of capital punishment. Retributive justice Execution is a rehabilitative punishment for an offender. The criminal experiences justice that is relative to the crime committed. This to me is revenge of some sort, but even so, it is a form of justice. Retribution is a valid reason to justify the death penalty according to the view of many. Deterrence Tremoglie makes a solid argument here. He offers statistics in various states to prove his point, that capital punishment is indeed a deterrent. He examines a situation in Britain as his benchmark. Cases of murder, and manslaughter, he says, have escalated in Britain from 0.68 per 100,000 of the population to 1 .42 per 100,000 since abolition of capital punishment in 1964. This is according to the Home Office that registered an alarming increase in illegal killings from 300 to 565 and 833 in 1964, 1994 and 2004 respectively. In addition, the number of those convicted for the concrete crime of murder as opposed to manslaughter and other unlawful killings has also been mounting inevitably. He observes that in 1965, the first year of abolition, there was a report of 57 cases and a report of 107 cases in a span of ten years. Because people who left prison after serving life sentences committed 71 murders, in the period between 1965 and 1998 alone, he firmly believes that the death sentence is a sure deterrent. However, he cautions that death penalty can only be an effective deterrent where the potential criminal plans for the crime and takes time to think about the possible penalty. However, capital punishment is not likely to be a deterrent if the crime is spontaneous. Following these statistics, one cannot tell that the society’s perspective towards crime has changed in the least. In any case, the situation is now worse. It may well be that the rate at which murder is committed would be much the same at present, or worse, if we had retained and continued to use the capital punishment. It is true to say that, only this one factor affects the rate of murder. Gun crime due to drug influence is on the increase, stabbings have augmented lately and so have the kicking and beating to death due to matters as trivial as arguments over politics. Careful analysis of such episodes only seems to point to the capital punishment as a very strong deterrence to criminal murders. Arguments against the death penalty There are a number of undeniable arguments against the death penalty. Execution of genuine people The most important one is the virtual certainty that genuinely innocent people will face that form of extermination and that there is no possible way of paying them back a recompense for this injustice. There is always unreported fear that there is a significant but much less realized danger of convicting one for murder on what should have been in actual sense manslaughter. Here, the victim may have killed somebody without intent of committing murder, but when his/her fate is reduced to the skill of the prosecutor and the defense lawyers, who would not ascertain the nitty-gritty of the case, then their ruling in favor of capital punishment would be utterly misleading. The disinformation campaign by the abolitionists is effective. These are well-funded politicians, entertainers, conservative journalists, academicians –all who are public policy and opinion makers. There is little data if any, pertaining to pro-capital punishment and those that argue in favor of it are only misguided (Tremoglie, 2003). Distress for the immediate family A second reason, that we often overlook, is the ordeal the innocent family and friends of the supposed criminals must suffer in the time leading to and during the execution. It is often very difficult for people to come to terms with the fact that their loved one could be guilty of a capital offense and no doubt even more difficult to come to terms with their death in this manner. One cannot deny the distress of the victim's immediate family in a case involving murder. Most countries have a very poor documentation on the fact that the government can administer the death penalty justly. It is rampant that a prisoner can fall on death row for several years awaiting the outcome of many appeals, many of which are pointless and filed at the last minute with intent to subvert justice. It is not humane It must be in the knowledge of everybody that criminals are real people too who have life and the capacity to experience pain, fear, anxiety and the loss of their loved ones, and all the accompanying emotions that the rest of us are capable of feeling. Every form of execution causes the prisoner untold suffering; be it by hanging, by firing squad, lethal injection or electrocution. There is no such thing as a humane method of going about it, although the state may argue some methods possibly cause less pain, but be in no doubt that whatever method of execution, it is a terrifying tribulation for the supposed criminal. There may be harsh effects upon society by executing capital punishment, not to talk of the mental anguish that the criminal suffers in the time leading to his death. Thanks to the current jurisdictions in several countries where public executing of supposed criminals has become outdated. One may argue in favor of public hanging, firing squad and the like, saying; people stop and look as cars crash and so it does not really matter. This is a very sadistic view; a public execution is not accidental. Tremoglie calls the death penalty a blunt instrument, which removes the individual's humanity to show compassion and the chance cause sufficient rehabilitation. In this way, the supposed murderer loses an opportunity to give something back to society. In the case of the worst criminals, this may be acceptable but is more questionable in the case less dreadful crimes are committed. She refers to the statement by, Amnesty International, which believes that the death penalty is the obliteration of human rights. It is the planned and cruel killing of a human being by the authorities in a bid to instill justice. It tampers with the right to life. It is the ultimate pitiless, inhuman and demeaning punishment. There can never be any justification for torment or for cruel treatment. Conclusion The conclusion of the matter is that the current practice of capital punishment is a moral ignominy. The irony is that the economic malfunctions and cultural diseases in those countries that practice it contribute to the cruelty that makes it necessary to let loose even more repression and brutality against its unmanageable citizens to preserve order and stave off chaos. The irony is that the very societies that exhibit moral uprightness have fallen victim to this injurious reality and are therefore practicing this behind the façade of prefecture. Those with the least right to exact it are precisely the ones most likely to do or are doing it, so to say. The society should provide opportunities for all citizens to achieve a good life in a reasonable culture. It is reasonable to believe that the demand for capital punishment will be abridged or even eliminated. The truth that our prisons are so full eloquently testifies that we are not doing to our best to create a good society. Massive incarceration indicates the insufficiency of our social wisdom prowess. It points to the triviality of our dedication to solving the basic problems of poverty, moral decadence and social discord. Meanwhile, our leaders need to consider our fantasy that capital punishment will bring sanity to our citizens more security against brutal crime as a mirage (Cauthen, 1997). Any punishment must be fair, just, adequate and most of all, enforceable if it has to bring out the desired effects. It is not arguable that society still views murder as the most heinous of all crimes, which is met with the most severe punishment. Whole life imprisonment could suffice for the worst murders with suitable gradations for less awful murders. Mandatory life sentence for murderers is not my take because to distinguish between dreadful crimes blatantly and deliberately caused and those crimes which are unintentional, is hard. Therefore, it is evidently necessary to give the jury the option of finding the prisoner culpable but in a lower degree of murder, and to give judiciary the ability to pass levelheaded, determinate sentences based upon proofs of the crime as presented to the court. Imprisonment is expensive and absolutely out of point, except if it serves as a means of banishing criminals from society for a given period of, in which case it is at least enforceable upon anyone who commits murder. However, it appears to many people to be a lenient option and this observation needs to be corrected. In modern times unfortunately, we frequently see murderers being able to escape the fangs of the jury on the grounds of diminished liability and their suspected psychiatric anomalies. This tends to take away peoples' faith in justice. This is very dangerous for the state (Ford, 2009). Having observed that that the current practice of capital punishment is a moral ignominy, the debate shall continue with the following to ponder: We cannot entrench the capital punishment in our jurisdictions and the indisputable problems it causes and continue to live with the escalating levels of murder and other capital crimes in our society. Secondly, we need to reintroduce capital punishment for only the worst murders, like serial killers, as retribution. This option would reduce overall crime levels. We need further to reintroduce capital punishment only with the aim of seeing the corresponding drop in serious crime and have the courage to accept the misery and trauma perpetrated on the innocent families of the supposed criminals and the wisdom to acknowledge the occasional inevitability of committing mistakes. References Cauthen, K. (1997). Capital Punishment. Retrieved May 3, 2010 from http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/cappun.htm Top of Form Ford, H. (2009). Facts about Capital Punishment. Retrieved May 2, 2010 from http://www.buzzle.com/articles/facts-about-capital-punishment.html Popper, K. (2009). First 1500 Characters of Capital Punishment: Fair or Unfair? Retrieved May 3, 2010 from http://www.123helpme.com/preview.asp?id=57244 Tremoglie M. (2003). Capital-Punishment Canards. Retrieved May 3, 2010 from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_6_19/ai_98415820/ White, D. (2010). Pros & Cons of the Death Penalty Retrieved May 2, 2010 from http://usliberals.about.com/od/deathpenalty/i/DeathPenalty.htm Read More