Should All Murderers Be Imprisoned Lifelong or Executed - Coursework Example

Should the Death Penalty Be Mandatory For All Murderers, Or Should They Spend The Rest of Their Life In Prison? Abstract: The life of an individual, of a human being is indeed precious. It is not just one life, it is the accumulation of a future, of all the goodness it has the capability to contribute to the world. Thus taking a life is equivalent to killing humanity. The question of the significance of the Death Sentence in the modern world, with increased homicide rates and inhumane crimes and easier excess to lethal weapons as a result of wide spreading technology, has become as pressing as ever. Should criminals convicted of murder be given the death sentence? Or should they be allowed to live a life in prison? Human rights activists are seen to protest for the rights of the criminal, who are, despite everything, still human beings and deserve the same respect any other human does. It is indeed a difficult decision, having grounds in probability and stakes in society, humanity and law & order. Whenever judgment is required, the first reaction of human beings is emotional. On deeper contemplation we come to logical results. For the judgment of murder, therefore, the initial response of any individual would be revenge, by making the assailant suffer the pain the victim had to go through. However, further scrutiny leads us to reflect that repetition of the act of a criminal will not bring any solutions to the greater problem of eradicating the evil and deterring the rate of the crime from the society. Thus we are forced to rationalize our thoughts and think about the issue in a larger perspective. It is evident to anyone that has lost someone close, that nothing can actually compensate the loss of a life. Therefore a death penalty does not avenge the murder of a victim. However notions like social justice and equilibrium are dependent on a system of adequate punishment for evil done against members of a social cooperation. Deeper analyses of these show appropriate punishment is indeed necessary to deter further homicide and safeguard the rights of people. INTRODUCTION Death Penalty, Capital Punishment or the Death Sentence, is essentially the punishment of criminals by taking their lives, i.e. sentencing them to death. The execution of criminals and wrong doers has been a part of human history since a long time. Ancient Biblical accounts tell us of the brutality with which the punishments took place, often without very justifiable crimes to account for. The slow and torturous methods, leading to a very painful death, were aimed not only at limiting crime, but were used by the rulers to establish fear in their subject. In later years attempts were made to diminish the cruelty of the act of killing and make it as swift and painless as possible. Death sentences were also limited to very serious offences. Post World War, most of the European countries abolished the death penalties, replacing them with sentences like life-long imprisonment and social service. Today almost all of the Western World, with the exception of United States has eliminated the death sentence from their courts. Even in the U.S, executions are carried out only for exceptional cases of murder crimes in which the brutality and inhumanity of the criminal is nonnegotiable. Also the method with which the execution takes place has been made as painless as possible with help of ample anesthesia followed by Lethal Injections that effect the functioning of the lungs and heart causing death without torture. However, apart from the West, the other 60 % of the world still lives in countries where all murderous crimes are punished by death sentences. The apparent shift of the European world through the course of history, from one extreme end to the other, when it comes to severity in punishments, and the stance of the U.S regarding the abolition of the death penalty, further complicates the decision in the absence of valid statistics to report whether its abolition or not has any effects on the deterrence of crime rates. We must therefore begin our thought process from the first event that leads to the choice of life or death for punishment. Murder is the beginning of it all. The reasons for murder is yet another story, which involves psychology and the elements that go into personality formation, because under normal circumstances a human being or any other creature for that matter, does not have the tendency to kill one of its kind. The act of murder of an innocent is an injustice of the highest level, compensation for which is practically impossible. Life is invaluable to everyone, therefore, by killing an individual, a murderer does not only effect one life, rather the whole society is affected and the punishment of the murderer is the business of everyone at stake. “The undeserved evil which anyone commits on another is to be regarded as perpetuated on himself.” (Pojman, 1997) This means that by inflicting harm on others, the criminal is breaking the code through which the rights, properties and lives of human beings, including himself, are safeguarded. Once he breaks the rule, he deserves a punishment that would equate his acts upon others. According to Louis P. Pojman, Punishment can be defined as “An evil inflicted by a person in a position of authority upon another person who is judged to have violated a rule.” It is necessary, for the valid justification of the punishment in question that, the ‘violation of the rule’ is intolerable and inhumane, while the ‘evil inflicted by a person of authority’ is just the opposite, i.e. civilized, painless and respectful. Punishment is often justified by the notion of equality. The harm or suffering a mature, sensible human being causes another, is no doubt unfair and unreasonable under any circumstance. To give justice to the victim, equality of suffering is warranted. At this point an argument that usually comes up against the capital punishment, questions the theory of adopting evil to cure evil. In other words the authority giving the punishments is itself committing similar cruel and inhumane acts. However the cruelty of death over other penalties can be argued. Pojman disagrees with the notion of death as a cruel punishment. In fact the “death penalty can be economically sound, cause minimal pain,.. express our condemnation of capital offenses, be deserved and yet serve as an adequate deterrent – which long-term imprisonment does not do to the same degree.” (Pojman, 1997). The death given as a punishment is nowhere as torturous, humiliating and mortifying as the act of the criminal against an innocent victim, keeping in mind only very brutal and selfish murders are punished with death. Anders Behring Breivik of Norway, charged for the massacre off 77 people, disregards the life-long sentence in favor of Capital Punishment, which has been abolished here after the World War II. (Hoopla, 2012). His example reflects how a painless death is more dignified than the torturous, slave like routines of prisons which often lead to further depression and aggressiveness in the criminals. Furthermore, crimes like murders and social evils through which harm is inflicted upon fellow human beings, need to be punished not only for the sake of making the criminal suffer what he has made others suffer, but to maintain social cooperation and equilibrium, the imbalance of which may result in disintegration of social values. Murder, negatively affects societies, evading security, injecting fear and distrust, which itself leads to other social evils. An effective punishment will also deter future possibilities of the crime being repeated under the same law, because of the presence of harsh consequences. This theory focuses on using the punishment as a threat only, as the need for punishment will arise only if the threat has failed.(Pojman, 1997) The stake of victims and their families, i.e. the direct effectees of the crime, who have been robbed of a life, is the greatest. In many cases, it is these families that ask for justice by ending the life of menaces like David Alan Gore of Florida, who raped and brutally murdered three teenage girls and two women, without a bit of remorse, doubling the pain that the families of the girls had to go through. His heinous acts did not stop despite his being sent to prison and being on parole, forcing the authorities to consider sentences of death and life imprisonment. The people close to the victims however are looking forward to seeing him go as they have been waiting for justice since 29 years. (rjbock, 2012) “I’ve been waiting for this day for years. I would’ve saved the state a lot of money if they let me. I’d do it myself and have no qualms about it,” said Mike Daley, whose wife, Judy Kay Daley was killed by Gore in July 1981. (rjbock, 2012) “It’s gone on so long that it’s just exhausting. I’m just so ready for it to be done. I’m ready for him to be gone. He has harmed so many people,” said Byer, whose daughter was one of Gore’s victims. (rjbock, 2012) However death, with its finality, may be considered a cruel punishment by some of the objectors of the death penalty as it is equally possible for crime to be deterred by effective alternative punishments, aiming to rehabilitate the criminal and make him serve the society. They argue that human life should be respected, even that of a criminal, as no good, whatsoever, will come out of killing which should only be resorted to, when absolutely necessary. The objection is valid, as life is precious and undoubtedly it is impossible to rule out anyone from the possibility of changing for the better. However, when it comes to human lives it is necessary to prioritize innocent lives over guilty ones. Letting a murderer live in imprisonment, with provisions of food, shelter and medical treatment, which the taxpayers pay for, will be devaluing the lives he took. Pojman gives the example of Adolf Hitler, with the view that punishing him would result in nothing positive for the world today. Despite the fact that it would bear no outcome now, punishment in accordance with his crimes will be appropriate, if only to pay tribute to the lives lost. (Pojman, 1997) CONCLUSION The conditions under which punishment in the form of death penalty should be necessary cannot be written down. It is always a difficult decision to make between life and death, as every criminal is also a human being and human beings among all creations are the most difficult to categorize as good or bad. (Sundby, 2007). However, the relation between social justice and punishment and the monstrous nature of some of the criminals, validates the necessity of death sentences in certain circumstances. Authorities have to make a choice between protecting and safeguarding the lives of law abiding citizens and keeping alive a person who has violated not only the law but the values of morality and humanity. Killing under circumstances of self defense and provocation are understandable as in most cases the plight of the assailant is as agonizing as that of the victim. But murders in which humanity itself is put to shame, where the motives are as evil as the act, the criminal deserves no compensation. The death sentence, as it is today in countries like the U.S, is acceptable and necessary to serve the atrocious acts of certain members of our society, until ways are sought to out root the factors of society that create these soul-less human beings. Death in such a case is better than letting the person live off the societies resources, and is often kinder than the sub-human treatment in prisons run for such criminals. However, since crime and society will always be interrelated, sociologists need to investigate better alternatives of prevention rather than cure of vices that exist in modern society and lead to the dehumanizing of people, leaving only want of material and ambition in place of souls. That is why it is so easy to kill a person, without often knowing who they are. BIBLIOGRAPHY • Harner, W. (2011, July 8). The Hoopla. (C. Roessler, Ed.) Retrieved April 19, 2012, from A Child's Way of looking at the Death Penalty: http://thehoopla.com.au/childs-death-penalty/ • Hoopla, T. (2012, April 19). A Case For The Death Penalty. Retrieved from The Hoopla: http://thehoopla.com.au/case-death-penalty/ • Marzili, A. (2008). Capital Punishment . New York: New York : Chelsea House. • Pojman, L. P. (1997). For Death Penalty. In J. H. Louis P. Pojman (Ed.), The Death Penalty: For and Against (pp. 1- 66). The Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group. • rjbock. (2012, April 12). Death Penalty Versus Life in Prison? Retrieved April 19, 2012, from Voice of Reason, Musings and Other Chattel: http://blockmusings.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/death-penalty-versus-life-in-prison/ • Sundby, S. E. (2007). A Life and Death Decision: A Jury Weighs the Death Penalty. Palgrave Macmillan. Read More