Capital punishment is always a delicate topic. Even though it has been introduced thousand years ago, it’s still a question that raises many issues: what is its impact on our society? Is it moral or not? Is it useful or not? Where does this practice come from? In this essay I will try to answer to these question. To begin with, it will be useful to analyze what role the capital punishment plays, or it’s supposed to play, in our society. The first purpose is to restore or maintain the security of the life, by stopping the killer to commit another murder and to avoid others becoming killers too. But, if the first task is easily and immediately achievable, the same cannot be said for the second one. In fact, if we have a quick look to the statistics of the last few years, we will discover that the murder rate in the countries that have death penalty is higher than that one in the countries that do not have death penalty. So, it seems that the fear to be executed doesn’t prevent people from committing crimes. On the contrary, this procedure could actually increase the number of crimes. In fact, with the capital punishment, whose execution is public and under the eyes of everyone, the state seems to allow, or even worst promote, forms of physical violence really high, and this could let individuals who are naturally violent to feel that life doesn’t have a lot of value. A fast and concrete example: “in West Virginia, a non death penalty state, the annual murder rate is four per 100,000 citizens, while in Virginia, which has one of the highest execution rates in the nation, the annual murder rate is six per 100,000 citizens” (William W. Wilkins, 2007). Another aspect of the capital punishment that touches the society is the cost. At t... ... middle of paper ... ...the next few years something will change. Bibliography William W. Wilkins (2007) University of Richmond Law Review Available at: http://lawreview.richmond.edu/the-legal-political-and-social-implications-of-the-death-penalty/ (Accessed on 23 April 2014) Jeffrey A. Fagan (2014) Columbia Law School Available at: https://www.law.columbia.edu/lawschool/communications/reports/summer06/capitalpunish (Accessed on 23 April 2014) Bernard Shaw (1903) Bartleby.com Available at: http://www.bartleby.com/157/6.html (Accessed 28 April 2014) Death Penalty Information Center (2014) Available at: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/part-i-history-death-penalty#early (Accessed 2 May 2014) The Guardian (2014) Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/mar/29/death-penalty-countries-world (Accessed 2 May 2014)
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”.
Randa, Laura E. “Society’s Final Solution: A History and Discussion of the Death Penalty.” (1997). Rpt.in History of the Death Penalty. Ed. Michael H. Reggio. University Press of America, Inc., 1997. 1-6 Print.
Bowers, W, Pierce, G., and McDevitt, J.(1984), Legal Homicide: Death as Punishment in America, 1964-1982, 333
Special attention will be given to the topics of deterrence, the families of the victims, and the increased population that has been occurring within our prisons. Any possible objections will also be assessed, including criticism regarding the monetary value of the use of the death penalty and opposition to this practice due to its characteristics, which some identify as hypocritical and inhumane. My goal in arguing for the moral justifiability of capital punishment is not to use this practice extensively, but rather to reduce the use to a minimum and use it only when necessary. Above all else, capital punishment should be morally justified in extreme situations because it has a deterrent effect. Many criminals seem to be threatened more by the thought of death rather than a long-term prison sentence.
Oct 1993. Retrieved November 18, 2010. Vol. 79. 134 pages (Document ID: 0747-0088) Published by American Bar Association
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 ...
...ed United States. U.S. Government Accounting Office. Capital Punishment. Washington: GPO, 1994 Cheatwood, Derral and Keith Harries. The Geography of Execution: The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America. Rowman, 1996 NAACP Legal Defense Fund . Death Row. New York: Hein, 1996 "Ex-Death Row Inmate Cleared of Charges." USA Today 11 Mar. 1999: 2A "Fatal Flaws: Innocence and the Death Penalty." Amnesty International. 10 Oct. 1999 23 Oct. 1999 Gest, Ted. "House Without a Blue Print." US News and World Report 8 Jul. 1996: 41 Stevens, Michelle. "Unfairness in Life and Death." Chicago Sun-Times 7 Feb. 1999: 23A American Bar Association. The Task Ahead: Reconciling Justice with Politics. 1997 United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Report. Washington: GPO, 1994 Wickham, DeWayne. "Call for a Death Penalty Moratorium." USA Today 8 Feb. 1999: 17A ILKMURPHY
Capital punishment, otherwise known as “The Death Penalty,” has been around for many years and has been the cause of death for over twelve hundred inmates since 1976 (“Death Penalty Information Center”), but is the Death Penalty really beneficial to the American public? This question is in the back of many people’s minds, and has left many questioning the meaning of the punishment. The death penalty targets murderers or high profile cases. Some say that the death penalty should apply to those who murder, rape, or abuse human beings such as children, or women. The significance of the penalty is to teach these criminals that there are laws that must be followed. In a figurative sense, it is to teach those potential wrongdoers a lesson. By examining the facts around us, we can gain a greater sense of security, and a greater understanding of what the death penalty can accomplish, all while assessing the high-quality aspects that the penalty has to offer.
Mappes, Thomas A., Jane S. Zembaty, and David DeGrazia. "The Death Penalty." Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy. 8th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. 105-53. Print.
In the Time article, “The Death of the Death Penalty”, David Von Drehle addresses the controversial issue of the death penalty. The death penalty in the United States is a declining and flawed method of punishment. The problem of the American death penalty is still an issue in this day and age. Von Drehle compresses the flaws of the death penalty into five simple reasons.
With the cost of the death penalty trial’s and incarceration, the death penalty is significantly much more expensive than the cost of life in prison. First, Trials alone during a death penalty case are one of the main reasons why the death penalty process is so expensive. For example, a twenty four year old man, Dennis Alvarez, was convicte...
Pasquerella, Lynn. “The Death Penalty in the United States.” The Study Circle Resource Center of Topsfield Foundation. July 1991. Topsfield Foundation. 03 Feb 2011. Web.
Capital punishment is a difficult subject for a lot of people because many question whether or not it is ethical to kill a convicted criminal. In order to critically analyze whether or not it is ethical, I will look at the issue using a utilitarianism approach because in order to get a good grasp of this topic we need to look at how the decision will impact us in the future. The utilitarianism approach will help us to examine this issue and see what some of the consequences are with this topic of capital punishment. For years, capital punishment has been used against criminals and continues to be used today, but lately this type of punishment has come into question because of the ethical question.
“The case Against the Death Penalty.” aclu.org. American Civil Liberties Union, 2012. Web. 12 Feb. 2013
Capital punishment has been a controversial topic in association to any person condemned to a serious committed crime. Capital punishment has been a historical punishment for any cruel crime. Issues associated to things such as the different methods used for execution in most states, waste of taxpayers’ money by performing execution, and how it does not serve as any form of justice have been a big argument that raise many eyebrows. Capital punishment is still an active form of deterrence in the United States. The history of the death penalty explains the different statistics about capital punishment and provides credible information as to why the form of punishment should be abolished by every state. It is believed