The Ethics of Capital Punishment
Ethics is "the study of standards of right and wrong; that part of
philosophy dealing with moral conduct, duty and judgement.'[1] Capital
Punishment is 'the death penalty for a crime.'[2] The word "capital"
in "capital punishment" refers to a person's head as in the past;
people were often executed by severing their head from their body.
Since the early 1800's, most executions have resulted from convictions
for murder. The death penalty has also been imposed for such crimes as
armed robbery, kidnapping, rape and treason. Some people believe that
capital punishment is necessary for punishing people that have
committed any type of crime, much of the time because these people
want justice; others think that capital punishment is only necessary
in extreme cases, such as murder, while others believe that it is
wrong and shouldn't be aloud to take place.
Amnesty International's thoughts on the death penalty is that it is
'cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment and a violation of the right
to life'[3]. In extreme cases, I believe that people should be
punished. People who commit crimes such as murder (mass or only an
individual killing), rape and kidnapping should all be punished for
what they have done. For example, the current issue with the
Balibombings "mastermind". Amrozi Bin Nurhasyim is up for trial and if
proven guilty, the death penalty will be imposed. Although he himself
believes that he is a hero, I believe that as he killed so many and
injured many more, the death punishment is the only fitting and
adequate punishment.
Many people oppose the death penalty because they consider it cruel....
... middle of paper ...
... that Capital Punishment is the best way to go to punish people who
murder and commit other drastic crimes. I believe that murders should
have the Death Penalty imposed to punish them for taking someone
else's life, although everyone has their own opinion and that is fine
to have a different opinion. Whether Capital Punishment is ethical is
also up to your own beliefs, and I hope this essay has given you an
insight into Capital Punishment and helped you determine you own
opinion.
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[1] World Book Online Dictionary -
http://dictionary.worldbookonline.com/wbol/wbDict?lu=ethics
[2] World Book Online Dictionary -
http://dictionary.worldbookonline.com/wbol/wbDict?lu=capital%20punishment
[3] Amnesty International Report "The Death Penalty"
Capital punishment, also referred to as the death penalty, is the judicially ordered execution of a prisoner as a punishment for a serious crime, often called a capital offence or a capital crime. In those jurisdictions that practice capital punishment, its use is usually restricted to a small number of criminal offences, principally, treason and murder, that is, the deliberate premeditated killing of another person. In the early 18th and 19th century the death penalty was inflicted in many ways. Some ways were, crucifixion, boiling in oil, drawing and quartering, impalement, beheading, burning alive, crushing, tearing asunder, stoning and drowning. In the late 19th century the types of punishments were limited and only a few of them remained permissible by law.
Capital Punishment Essays - For the Common Good. Putting to death people judged to have committed certain extreme Terrible crimes are a practice of ancient standing, but in the United States. in the second half of the twentieth century, it has become a very controversial issue. Changing views on this difficult issue led the Supreme Court to abolish capital punishment in 1972 but later upheld it in 1977. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard' Although capital punishment is what the people want, there are many.
"Capital punishment is a term which indicates muddled thinking." George Bernard Shaw The "muddled thinking" that Shaw speaks of is the thinking that perpetuates the controversy over capital punishment in the United States today. The impractical concurrence of a theoretical, moral argument and definite, legal application has left all sides in this controversy dissatisfied with the ultimate handling of the issue. There are legitimate ethical and empirical considerations that stand on both the side that favors and on the side that opposes the death penalty. The general incompatibility of these considerations renders them irreconcilable. It is within this condition of irreconcilability that the government must initiate and implement its policies regarding capital punishment. This fixed condition has led to the necessity for and creation of comprises between both sites of this debate, attempting to synthesize the considerations of the two. The contentious issue of the capital punishment was rekindled in the 1970s when, in 1976, the Supreme reinstated the practice after a four-year hiatus. The arguments that comprise much of the legal debate on the issue stem from the eighth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution. The eighth reads, "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." 1
I live in a state where capital punishment is still being practiced. In fact, I live thirty minutes away from a prison that executes the death penalty. Are we playing God by controlling who does not deserve to live? How can we kill anyone who is no longer a threat to the society? Most have committed terrible crimes in order to get the death penalty, but there are those that were wrongfully convicted. The law system is not perfect, it will never be perfect. Sure, they can get numerous appeals before they are executed. If there is no new evidence or new technology to prove their innocence, there is no use in giving them any number of tries before being executed. It was said that it cost more to execute the death penalty (from the time of arrest to the time of execution) than to give them life without the possibility of parole. As technology increases, we have more tools that we can use for forensic investigation. The birth of DNA in forensic helped save at least one of the inmates on death row in California that was wrongfully convicted. If you wrongfully convicted someone, you can set them free. If you wrongfully executed someone, you can not reverse the process. We have all done things in the past that we were not proud of and would never do it again; at least I had. The ability to reform is in all of us. There are other ways to punish the people on death row in California other than the path of death penalty. Nothing is set in stones but death.
The death penalty, as administered by states based on their individual laws, is considered capital punishment, the purpose of which is to penalize criminals convicted of murder or other heinous crimes (Fabian). The death penalty issue has been the focus of much controversy in recent years, even though capital punishment has been a part of our country's history since the beginning. Crimes in colonial times, such as murder and theft of livestock were dealt with swiftly and decisively ("The Death Penalty..."). Criminals were hanged shortly after their trial, in public executions. This practice was then considered just punishment for those crimes. Recently though, the focus of the death penalty debate has been on moral and legal issues. The murderers of today's society can be assured of a much longer life even after conviction, with the constraints of the appeals process slowing the implementation of their death sentence. In most cases, the appeal process lasts several years, during which time criminals enjoy comfortable lives. They have television, gym facilities, and the leisure time to attend free college-level classes that most American citizens must struggle to afford. Foremost, these murderers have the luxury of time, something their victims ran out of the moment their paths crossed. It is time this country realized the only true justice for these criminals is in the form of the death penalty. The death penalty should be administered for particularly heinous crimes.
Proponents of capital punishment believe that killing criminals is a moral and ethical way of punishing them. They feel there is justification in taking the life of a certain criminal, when in fact that justification is nothing more than revenge. They also feel that the death penalty deters crime, although there have been no conclusive studies confirming that viewpoint (Bedau).
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.
Offenders given mandatory life in prison on charges of murder, on average only serve 16 years before being released back into society. One in three of these killers carries out a second murder even under the supervision of the probation officer.1 If we allow murderers to spend life in prison we run the chance of them getting out and killing again. Capital punishment can also deter future perpetrators from committing such a heinous crime, and it will end the prisoner’s suffering by giving them a humane death and give closure to the victim’s family. Without a concrete meaning of “life in prison” we need the death penalty to put an end to the most evil of people.
While one person lays with their wrists circumscribed to the worn leather of the gurney, another person holds two skin-piercing needles. The individual holding the needles is an inexperienced technician who obtains permission from the United States federal government to murder people. One needle is held as a precaution in case the pain is too visible to the viewers. Another dagger filled with a lethal dosage of chemicals is inserted into the vein that causes the person to stop breathing. When the cry of the heart rate monitor becomes monotone, the corrupt procedure is complete. Lying in the chair is a corpse when moments ago it was an individual who made one fatal mistake that will never get the chance to redeem (Ecenbarger). Although some people believe that the death
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 ...
While we may all want murders off the street, the problem we come to face is that capital punishment is being used for vengeance or as a deterrent. Capital punishment has been used worldwide, not only by the governments to instill fear, but to show that there are repercussions to ones actions. From the time we are born, we are taught to learn the difference between right and wrong. It is ingrained in our brains, what happens to people that do bad things? Capital punishment is renowned for being the worst thing that could be brought amongst ones life.
Capital punishment is the death penalty, or execution which is the sentence of death upon a person by judicial process as a punishment for a crime like murdering another human and being found guilty by a group of jurors who have listen to a court hearing were the District Attorney and the defendant argue their sides of the case. Historical penalties include boiling to death, flaying, disembowelment, crucifixion, crushing (including crushing by elephant), stoning, execution by burning, dismemberment.(2008) The U.S., begin using the electric chair and the gas chamber as more humane execution then hanging, then moved to lethal injection, which in has been criticized for being too painful. Some countries still choose to use hanging, and beheading by sword or even stoning.
Capital punishment is the punishment of death for a crime given by the state. It is used for a variety of crimes such as murder, drug trafficking and treason. Many countries also have the death penalty for sexual crimes such as rape, incest and adultery. The lethal injection, the electric chair, hanging and stoning are all methods of execution used throughout the world. Capital punishment has been around since ancient times; it was used in ancient Rome, and one of the most famous people to be crucified was Jesus Christ. 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.
The death penalty is mainly known by capital punishment. It is a legal process whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime. The judicial degree that someone be punished in this manner is a death sentence. The actual process of killing someone is an execution. Capital punishment has in the past been practiced by most societies. Currently fifty eight nations actively practice it and ninety seven countries have abolished it. Capital punishment is a matter of active controversy in various countries and states. Positions can vary within single political ideology or cultural region. I am for the death penalty. With the death penalty it allows there to be equal punishment among criminals, and it brings about peace of mind to everyone.