Why the Capital Punishment Penalty Should Not Be Applied - Essay Example

Capital punishment: Introduction: Capital punishment is applied to some criminal offences example murder and rape, many nations in the world have abolished this type of punishment while others still retain it, and according to my own view capital punishment should not a proper form of punishment in any case. I strongly oppose capital punishment and some of the reason why I oppose capital punishment is because the judicial system may fail to reveal the truth and punish innocent individuals, it is a brutal method of punishment and it hurts more people than the crime itself. Why the capital punishment penalty should not be applied: One of the reasons why I oppose capital punishment is because the judicial system is certain that the individual sentenced is the real criminal, also it may not be certain what happened because some individuals face murder charges while others face manslaughter, this in most cases the only person who may really know what happened is the deceased and the accused, however in some cases the accused may be innocent and not know what happened to the deceased. For this reason therefore capital punishment should be abolished to avoid injustices of the judicial system. The other reason is that the probability of winning or loosing a case will depend on whether the accused has hired a good lawyer, as a result of this poor individuals in the society may fail to win a case and face the death penalty which is an injustice to them, a wealthy individual may win a murder case while a poor individual may face the death penalty instead of being charged for manslaughter. This therefore may results to inequality in the society where the rich survive and the poor are killed. Criminals have families and relatives, during the execution family members and relatives may go through a rough time which may even last for many years, the family members of the deceased suffer but still the accused family members will also suffer and therefore capital punishment should be abolished. Capital punishment may not be applied justly in many nations, for example in many nations a criminal may be on the death row for years appealing escaping execution, as a result of this criminals may spend many years in jail trying to escape the verdict and finally win or loose an appeal, this may result to time wastage and also costly and this would not be the case if capital punishment was abolished. Capital punishment may also not be properly applied whereby in some cases minor crimes committed may face the death penalty. An example is the case where Singapore in 1995 hanged two girls aged 18 years after being charged with drug trafficking, this is minor offence that did not have to face such charges especially to citizens of their age. The other reason why I oppose capital punishment is the fact that some time the judicial system may fail to reveal the truth, individuals may be innocent and yet face the death penalty. In some cases there is not certainty that the individual killed or raped and therefore end up killing and hurting innocent individuals. Many cases around the world that involve murder and rape are yet to be resolved and in most cases innocent individuals are punished for these crimes. Killing innocent individuals in country is not ethical and therefore capital punishment should be abolished. Some of the reasons why the state may support capital punishment is cost, a criminal may be forced to face the death penalty due to the high cost of him or her being sent to prison for the rest of his life, therefore the state will apply the death penalty to reduce costs, however this is not a good reason why a nation should kill criminals, this is because the government also spends a lot of resources on the poor and disabled and therefore should not kill to reduce costs. The capital punishment is also applied in order to deter others from such criminal offenses, however punishment should not be the objective and the judicial system should aim at reducing the criminal offences through prevention measures. Death penalties may be delayed for many years and therefore may not have any effect on the deterrence effect. This is a brutal way of treating other people, in the past people were hanged in public and people would watch and enjoy criminals being hanged, this portrays a brutal society that is ready to kill and people seem to enjoy the killing, by continuing with capital offence the society attitude toward killing may change and people may be even more brutal as a result of the brutal acts they enjoy watching being performed by the judicial system. It should be clear that criminals have emotions; they have families and relatives that they live behind when they face the death penalty which may turn to be a very painful experience to the family members. My final point is that many nations have abolished capital punishment and non of these nations has reintroduced this form of punishment, it is a form of social change and nations that have not abolished this form of punishment should realize that they are lagging behind others in terms of development and changes necessarily for a better generation in the future. Conclusion: From the above discussion it is evident that criminal punishment will hurt more people when the crime itself was committed, for example when the crime is committed the family of the deceased are hurt but also the accused family will also be hurt when the death penalty is applied. The probability of winning or losing in court depends on how good the lawyer may be in court, as a result of some individuals may be tried for murder rather than manslaughter and therefore result to injustice of the judicial system. Wealthy individuals may win a murder case while poor individuals may face the death penalty for manslaughter. This therefore will lead to inequality and injustice of the judicial system. Prisoners await for many years before the sentence is administered, many appeals are sent and when the execution is performed the crime is already long forgotten and has no effect on deterring crime, this is because many argue that the death penalty will reduce crime rates but the delay in sentencing of death penalty individuals leads to less effect on the society. References: Robert Bair and Stuart Rosenbaum (1999) Punishment and the Death Penalty, McGraw Hill Publishers, New York Read More