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There are many instances where a person is executed wrongfully, if this is the case, why do it at all? If a loved one is murdered, and their murderer was sentenced to death, if given the opportunity, would you spare them their life? I believe if you chose not to spare a human life, you chose wrong; I plan on arguing why this is morally wrong, and how it could be resolved.
Let’s analyze a scenario, a woman’s husband was murdered, she is certain that he is guilty of it because he confessed to the murder on the day he was going to be executed. The widow is then visited by the inmate’s wife, begging for forgiveness, and pleading for her to save her husband’s life. Should she save him from being executed or let him be put to death? I would argue that she should not let him die. It goes back to the old saying “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Though she may not see it right away because of feelings of fury and anger, this decision should be made carefully because it will affect the rest of her life. If she were to let him be put to death she may experience feelings of guilt for making the wrong decision, and letting the execution take place. As the saying goes, “an eye for an eye,” is not always the best solution.
Is this not what we try to teach our children as they grow into adulthood? How will she explain to her children that the person who murdered their father was executed, and although she could have prevented it, she did not? She went back on the lessons that people try to teach their children every day; to show compassion, have integrity, and live by good morals. What decisions you make now will have consequences in the end. Therefore, if you make a decision that is out of context, or immoral, it will forever be on your co...
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...at court room he thought to himself whether or not he was making the right decision. Unfortunately, his morals went out of the window, and he chose to do what he thought was best for him. Or did he? Any person with any moral value would struggle with such a choice. Hopefully, sooner than later he will try to correct the situation, but that will be determined by how bad his conscience is getting to him.
In a moral dilemma, someone always ends up paying a price. “What price you are willing to pay?” is the question, I am sure most people ask themselves each time they come across such a dilemma. I believe that you must remain true to yourself and do what is morally right for you, and your family; do what you know will not keep you up at night, in a sense. To make the wrong or immoral decision would be living a life in demise, which is like not living a life at all.
On Tuesday, July 29, 1981, eight year-old Cheryl Ziemba, and her four year-old brother, Christopher, bodies were found in a coal dump in Old Forge, Pennsylvania. Only two days after the bodies were discovered, fifteen-year old, Joseph Aulisio, a member of the search party, was arrested for the murders. He had lured the two kids into a house that was under construction and owned by his father and shot them from only 10 feet away, Cheryl was shot in the head and Christopher had been shot in the chest. To this day there has been no motive established as to why Aulisio wished to kill these two kids. Nearly a year later in May 1982, a jury sentenced the then sixteen year-old to death, who was casually chewing gum when the jurors presented him with his sentence and then turned to his dad and pumped his fist in the air yelling “It’s party time!”. It has been 34 years since that conviction, and Aulisio continues to sit in jail with no signs of remorse. So why wouldn’t the death penalty be enforced with someone so inhumane and removed from society? Why not eliminate this being from society ...
Capital punishment has long been a topic for heated debate throughout the United States of America and the civilized world. For many politicians, the death penalty has been a key pillar to winning a state or election; and, to some extent, politics have been a key influence in America’s justice system. Many nations have outlawed capital punishment, with the United States included between 1972 and 1976. In the United States, there has been a renewed movement for this “eye for an eye” method, citing such arguments as “deterrence” and “victims’ rights.” This movement begs a single question – is there any economical, legal, or statistical support for the ultimate punishment? This article will strive to answer that question by evaluating several key issues (be they supporting or otherwise) concerning capital punishment – the legitimacy of ‘deterrence,’ the legality of capital punishment under the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment” clause, and the cost associated with putting a man to death in relation to the cost associated with life imprisonment.
Is the death penalty fair? Is it humane? Does it deter crime? The answers to these questions vary depending on who answers them. The issue of capital punishment raises many debates. These same questions troubled Americans just as much in the day of the Salem witch trials as now in the say of Timothy McVeigh. During the time of the Salem witchcraft trials they had the same problem as present society faces. Twenty innocent people had been sentenced to death. It was too late to reverse the decision and the jurors admitted to their mistake. The execution of innocent people is still a major concern for American citizens today.
It's dark and cold, the fortress-like building has cinderblock walls, and death lurks around the perimeter. A man will die tonight. Under the blue sky, small black birds gather outside the fence that surrounds the building to flaunt their freedom. There is a gothic feel to the scene, as though you have stepped into a horror movie.
There are many pros to the death penalty. Some claim that there is a preventative effect on potential murderers, although there is a lot of debate about this and just about every other argument for or against capital punishment. Another is the idea of incapacitation. Truthfully, why should someone have the right to live if they have taken that right from another person? The purpose why this writer supports capital punishment is because in observing victims’ families and their grief over murdered loved ones. This writer believes anyone who murders should be put to death. One reason for this is because people should not have the right to live after they have killed a fellow human being. The death penalty is a topic dealing with ethics, a set of moral principles or values. This issue is constantly filled with mix feelings and attitudes which the writer will attempt to present in the following paragraphs.
This paper will focus on Capital Punishment, which we will define as execution through means of lethal injection administered by an executioner to someone convicted of murder, and for the purpose of this paper murder will be established as killing an innocent person in cold blood. It will concern the dehumanization of the condemned and the inappropriateness of employing the same morality and ethicality to someone who in the eyes of the public have lost all humaneness. Dehumanization will be, for the sake of my argument, classified as depriving someone from his humanity, and by depriving them of humanness, which is essential to ethics; we fracture the foundation of morality and ethics because without humans there is no morality or ethicality. I will argue that Capital Punishment undermines ethical and moral foundations in particular Kant’s theories by dehumanizing the condemned, therefore, opposing ethical arguments supporting Capital Punishment by making morality and ethicality inapplicable to someone who has had his humanity denied to him. I will first outline the various reasons in how the condemned is stripped of their humanity by demonstrating how it violates the value of life and how using it as revenge and as a deterrent of other crimes goes against Kant’s “Practical Imperative” which states that no human being should be seen as a means to an end because this essentially strips him of the right to live for himself. I will also show how Kant’s ethical theory regarding Capital Punishment, in which he indicates that taking a human life should always be punished by taking the offenders life, has contradictions especially in respect to the head of state where the same rules do not apply to them (Avaliani). The authorities are ...
Two major claims: death penalty serves as a deterrent and death penalty is morally justified because murderers can’t live and you have a right to kill them.
Throughout the history of man there has always existed a sort of rule pertaining to retribution for just and unjust acts. For the just came rewards, and for the unjust came punishments. This has been a law as old as time. One philosophy about the treatment of the unjust is most controversial in modern time and throughout our history; which is is the ethical decision of a death penalty. This controversial issue of punishment by death has been going on for centuries. It dates back to as early as 399 B.C.E., to when Socrates was forced to drink hemlock for his “corruption of the youth” and “impiety”.
In the United States, since the 1970s there have been more than 1270 executions according to the death penalty information center (Fact Sheet), What’s alarming about that number, is the number of people who were condemned to be executed based on race, income and social status alone, targeting those that could not afford good legal counsel, and were appointed attorneys that were “inexperienced and had below appropriate professional standards” (Hessick 1069), which sealed the fate of those literally fighting for their lives, on the day of sentencing.
As German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche quoted “It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.” The defendant Mary Barnett has been charged with the crime of second degree murder of the death of her six-month-old baby. In some sense, a mother who killed her own child ,out of personal relationships, is obviously guilty. However, based on current evidence, the verdict could be arguable. Barnett qualified some criteria of a second degree murderer such as intentionally leaving Alison alone to die in their apartment. Due to her mental state, Barnett was not aware she was leaving her children instead thought the child will taken care of whey she was at California. It comes to the reason that Mary
Using capital punishment would put an end to the killer’s suffering, and let him leave the world peacefully. With the death penalty in place, the victim’s family can finally get closure. Families that have been through the intense experience of losing a loved one might call for lex talionis, or eye for an eye. They could believe that the killer took their loved one from them and the only acceptable recourse would be to take the murderer’s life. This retaliation for the family might be the most important reason to instill the death penalty in today’s
Americans have argued over the death penalty since the early days of our country. In the United States only 38 states have capital punishment statutes. As of year ended in 1999, in Texas, the state had executed 496 prisoners since 1930. The laws in the United States have change drastically in regards to capital punishment. An example of this would be the years from 1968 to 1977 due to the nearly 10 year moratorium. During those years, the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment violated the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. However, this ended in 1976, when the Supreme Court reversed the ruling. They stated that the punishment of sentencing one to death does not perpetually infringe the Constitution. Richard Nixon said, “Contrary to the views of some social theorists, I am convinced that the death penalty can be an effective deterrent against specific crimes.”1 Whether the case be morally, monetarily, or just pure disagreement, citizens have argued the benefits of capital punishment. While we may all want murders off the street, the problem we come to face is that is capital punishment being used for vengeance or as a deterrent.
The Ethics of Capital Punishment Ethics is "the study of standards of right and wrong. " philosophy dealing with moral conduct, duty and judgement. ' [1] Capital Punishment is the death penalty for a crime. The word "capital" in "capital punishment" refers to a person's head as in the past. people were often executed by severing their heads from their bodies.
The death penalty has been present, in one way or another, for virtually as long as human civilization has existed. The reasons why are apparent; it is intrinsically logical to human beings that a person who takes the life of another should also be killed. This philosophy is exemplified in the famous Biblical passage, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." However, in light of recent research into ethics, criminology and the justice system, the time has come for us to re-examine our ageless paradigm of revenge.
Ethics and morality are the founding reasons for both supporting and opposing the death penalty, leading to the highly contentious nature of the debate. When heinous crimes are com...