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Indian Penal Code 302:.............'to be hanged till death'! And the judge in his high seat signs with a grim face and breaks his pen. That blot of ink on that damned paper slowly transforms into drops of blood. Justice has been done and people may rest in peace. Wish it were so! The civilized world debates whether this is indeed...justice. The men who seat in high backed chairs and decree, the high priests of justice are demi gods. They kill....period! The Bible says that even God forgives. Who the hell is man to decide whether a person be allowed to live or not? What power, what authority entitles him to deal death at the scratch of a pen?The whole world awaits a judgement day. The mortal judges can hardly wait. Crimes are punishable and indeed , their intensities should vary with their heniousness. But to take away the right to live is against humanity. Imagine, dear reader, how it must feel to feel the rope press on your neck, the air suddenly rare, the crushing sensation on the spine. At a kerchief's drop, the lever moves and the man hangs in mid air, legs throwing frantically for some support, the pain unbearable till one hears the 'snap', the crack of the human neck! Where has the humanity vanished? Judgement was never meant to be so brutish. One of the most portent arguements against capital punishment is that we have no right to take something we cannot replenish.Life, the supreme and enigmatic benediction of God. We cannot provide one with it. What gives us the right to take it away? History says, there was a time in middle earth, when an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth , used to be the form of justice imparted. History also nomenclates that period as the 'dark ages', man was still on the threshold of civilisation. This is vengeance, not justice.It is barbaric in essence and is no better than 'street justice'. If this form of juvenile jurisdiction must prevail, legalise the underworld. After all they deal with equal fairness. Justice is not infalliable. It is administered by humans and errare humanum est. But this is like walking on quicksand. Here one mistake is irreversible. A man hangs and with that everything ends. What if it is later proved that someone goofed up, something went terribly wrong? No amount of repentance will make right that terrible wrong.
Savannah Lamb in her term paper, “An Eye for an Eye” explains that death is a godly thing, not something to be done by human hands. Lamb supports her claims by explaining the Death Penalty is an act of barbaric murder, and we teach our children that two wrongs do not make a right. So why do we contradict ourselves by sentencing people to the death penalty? The authors purpose is to suggest a better way to punish the criminal without sentencing the accused to death. The Author writes in a formal tone to the reader.
He argues that the only punishment possibly equivalent to death, the amount of inflicted harm, is death. Death is qualitatively different from any kind of life, so no substitute could be found that would equal death(6). The down side of the retributive system of just can be observed in our modern practices of zero tolerance laws. These laws have placed values of some wrongdoings so high that punishment for relatively minor offenses can see an offender detained for substantially longer than arguably needed to repay the harm they caused. Placing a grater demand on our prison facilities and creates a circle of offense and
The capital punishment has been cited as a reasonable sentence by those who advocate for retribution. This is essentially when it comes to justice so that people take full responsibility for their individual actions. Studies have proved that the decision to take away life of a person because they committed a certain crime serves to perpetuate the crime in question. It also serves to enhance the progress of organized and violent crime. It has been noted that various flaws in the justice system has led to the wrong conviction of innocent people. On the other hand, the guilty have also been set free, and a plethora of several cases has come up when a critical look at the capital punishment has been undertaken. Killers hardly kill their victims deliberately, but they probably act on anger, passion, or impulsively. In this regard, it is not proper to convict them exclusively without
In this paper I will argue for the moral permissibility of the death penalty and I am fairly confident that when the case for capital punishment is made properly, its appeal to logic and morality is compelling. The practice of the death penalty is no longer as wide-spread as it used to be throughout the world; in fact, though the death penalty was nearly universal in past societies, only 71 countries world-wide still officially permit the death penalty (www.infoplease.com); the U.S. being among them. Since colonial times, executions have taken place in America, making them a part of its history and tradition. Given the pervasiveness of the death penalty in the past, why do so few countries use the death penalty, and why are there American states that no longer sanction its use? Is there a moral wrong involved in the taking of a criminal’s life? Of course the usual arguments will be brought up, but beyond the primary discourse most people do not go deeper than their “gut feeling” or personal convictions. When you hear about how a family was ruthlessly slaughtered by a psychopathic serial killer most minds instantly feel that this man should be punished, but to what extent? Would it be just to put this person to death?
If, however, he has committed a murder, he must die. In this case, there is no substitute that will satisfy the requirement of legal justice. There is no sameness of kind between death and remaining alive under the most miserable conditions, and consequently there is also no equality between the crime and the retribution unless the criminal is judicially put to death. (101)
... found justice for the victim who lost their lives at the hand of a criminal. The critics of capital punishment argue that the government over reached it authority pertaining to the death penalty and have sought to judge in God stead. However, the advocates of capital punishment argue that many nations whether modern or ancient has used capital punishment as a method of justice. This author think that capital murder is a debatable issue that should always be approach with caution.
We’re only human, we all make mistakes. It is certainly that if a person who commits a crime deserves punishment, but there is a difference between making someone serve a punishment and killing them. The death penalty does not provide injustice, there are still criminals who continue to break the laws. There are still murder cases going on while a criminal is being punished for committing a crime. It does not deter the crime. It still continues. Who is stopping it? The government is committing a crime itself. They claim that killing someone means you shall be killed too. Well, that all is part of a murderer as well. Burning, hanging, drowning, crucifixion, breaking on the will, boiling to death, and, electrocution are such barbaric acts. Capital
There is more to executions than justice for the dead. It is protection for the living.
Death is an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality, and in its enormity. The fatal constitutional infirmity in the punishment of death is that it treats 'members of the human race as non humans, as objects to be toyed with and discarded . It is thus inconsistent with the fundamental premise of the Clause that even the vilest criminal remains a human being possessed of common human dignity. As such it is a penalty that 'subjects the individual to a fate forbidden by the principle of civilized treatment guaranteed by the [Clause]. Therefore, death is today a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Clause. The ethical question here is, “Is the death penalty violating our very own amendments?”
First, people should know the history of the death penalty. The death penalty has a long history dating back to the 16th Century BC. "In 16th Century BC Egypt, a death sentence was ordered for members of nobility, who were accused of magic. They were ordered to take their own life. The non-nobility was usually killed with an ax"(Burns). During the 18th Century BC, King Hammurabi of Babylon had a code that arranged the death penalty for 25 different crimes although murder was not one of them (Burns).
Capital Punishment, commonly known as the death penalty, is one of the most controversial problems of our society today. There are many stands you can take with it: yes; no; maybe; only in this situation; only if this doesn’t happen. Even the Bible is undecided about what to do with people who commit such horrendous crimes.
ABSTRACT: In this paper I present a moral argument against capital punishment that does not depend upon the claim that all killing is immoral. The argument is directed primarily against non-philosophers in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Oddly, the moral argument against capital punishment has not been effective in the United States despite the biblical injunction against killing. Religious supporters of the death penalty often invoke a presumed distinction between ‘killing’ and ‘murdering’ and avow that God forbade the latter but not the former. Self-defense and just wars are cited as cases of morally justified killing. Accepting these premises, I point out that when cases of justified killing in self-defense are altered to include an element of delay, disarming and premeditation, they too become murder. Since the death penalty clearly involves the elements of delay, disarming and premeditation, I conclude that the death penalty is murder in the biblical sense and ought to be abolished in any God-fearing (or otherwise moral) society.
The death penalty, a constant source of controversy and divided opinion, is the punishment of death given to criminals who commit severe crimes. As the severity of crimes that attract the death penalty is debatable, so is its correctness and effectiveness. The justice system is based upon punishment for crimes committed with emphasis on the punishment fitting the crime. Countries such as China and Singapore have used it to punish drug traffickers and therefore fuelled debate on how fitting the punishment is in such cases. For all it aims to achieve, the death penalty has well documented weaknesses, not least of which is its brutality and finality, and it is these frailties that lead to the calls for its abolishment. The death penalty is inhumane, wrongly applied and completely unjustifiable irrespective of the crime. Life imprisonment without parole or pardon achieves all that the death penalty seeks to achieve without costing the society its moral standing.
First, people should know the history of the death penalty. The death penalty has a long history dating back to the 16th Century BC. "In 16th Century BC Egypt, a death sentence was ordered for members of nobility, who were accused of magic. They were ordered to take their own life. The non-no...
Capital punishment is now illegal in many countries, like the United Kingdom, France and Germany, but it is also legal in many other countries, such as China and the USA. There is a large debate on whether or not capital punishment should be illegal all over the world, as everyone has a different opinion on it. In this essay, I will state arguments for and against the death penalty, as well as my own opinion: capital punishment should be illegal everywhere. Firstly, many believe capital punishment should be reinstated in the United Kingdom because of the financial cost of prisoners. Annually, it costs about £26,978 per prisoner when they are in jail.