Against Capital Punishment

Senator for Utah Orrin Hatch once said, “Capital punishment is our society’s recognition of the sanctity of human life,” (Brainy Quote). While the arguments for both sides of the debate over the morality of the death penalty are vast, the bottom line is that the death penalty does not disregard human life, but rather it reveres it, as Hatch said. Morality is defined as, “The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct,” (The Free Dictionary). One who seeks to protect a person who has committed a heinous crime such as murder is arguably not in accords with what is right and wrong. Therefore, although killing is generally accepted as being wrong, the death penalty is sometimes the only solution to bring justice to a

The death penalty does not help reduce crime. They compare and see the different crime rates between the states. In America's Death Penalty: Just Another Form Of Violence states in the article that “a recent study commissioned by The New York Times examined FBI data and found the death-penalty states average murder rates consistently exceeded those of non-death-penalty states” (Bessler 14). States that do not use capital punishment have lower crime rates than the states that use it. The death penalty does not stop crime but actually influences people to. When the crime rate is high, it also means that it is not as safe to be living there. In the book, Death Row and Capital Punishment, it states that “the places that use the death penalty the least seem to be the safest for police officers” (Kerrigan 45). It is saying that it is safer for officers which also means that it is safer for people too since there will be less crime. There are more cops to help protect people. The thing is that some people are deliberately being targeted and giving harsher punishments than to

More than a hundred of Americans are wrongfully sent to death row. Hundreds of people die innocent. Killing people for killing others is wrong in any situation. Though some people say when murder is punished with death less people will commit crime, murdering is uncivil, especially when the person is wrongfully accused.

The death penalty does not deter criminals from committing crime. Most criminals who commit crimes do not have intentions of being caught and believe that they are invincible from the repercussions of their actions. Because of this, the death penalty really does not deter criminals from committing a crime. In fact, the death penalty could be considered an “easy way out” because the criminal does not have to spend several months, years, or even the rest of his or her life behind bars with little contact with the outside world. The criminal can just die and no longer have to suffer with knowing what he or she did, how it has affected others, and how it will continue to affect his or her life. Also, many criminals end up committing suicide in prison because they do not want to have to spend every day locked in a jail cell for extended periods of time.

States that have the death penalty want to incite fear in criminals by sentencing that person to death, so that will scare other criminals, and future criminals to stop committing crimes. According to an article by Jeffery young that crimes is still up, and never going down; that means no matter what the crime is people still committing crimes, and the crime rates is not decreasing, but is increasing and crime is still happening at this point. States that have the death penalty want to say that executing criminals will keep the community safe, but Aaron Taylor states in an article that the community is not safe when criminal is still being set free;

A man by the name of John Grisham once said, “Who exactly, gives us the right to kill? If killing is wrong, then why are we allowed to kill?” Do people kill because they feel guilty? Once the criminal kills or commits a crime, is it okay for them to be sentenced to the death penalty? The death penalty can be looked at in a variation of ways. However, is it moral or immoral?

Not only does the death penalty run the risk of killing an innocent citizen, but it also violates the Constitution through the use or threat of “cruel and unusual punishment.” The opposing view might argue that it is only right for the individual responsible for the death of another individual to be killed also, but: “two wrongs do not make a right.” I feel that although one person made a drastic mistake by killing someone else, he/she still should be treated as a human. He/she should also still be subject to the same rights as any other citizen, which includes the right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment. Killing death row inmates to me seems like a hypocritical action which , “devalues the respect we place on human life (Jones). In the US we stress the importance of human life and express the fact that killing is shunned upon, but yet we accept killing as long as it comes from a court ruling.

Vice-presidential hopeful Tim Kaine once said, “My faith teaches that life is sacred. That's why I personally oppose the death penalty. But I take my oath of office seriously, and I'll enforce the death penalty...because it's the law.” The death penalty in the US has had a complicated legal past. Death penalty advocates argue that some crimes deserve no less than death, and act as a deterrent to prevent more crimes. Many states have conflicting laws, while some have abolished it entirely. Those who are against the death penalty point to a history of wrongful convictions as proof that sentencing innocent people to die is a terrible outcome that we cannot allow. The Supreme Court itself has weighed in on the manner many times, and even at one

Cultural Relativist states that morality is created collectively by groups of humans and differs from society to society. Each type of society has its own moral norms which are binding on the people who belong to that type of society. Each type of society defines who is and who is not a member of the moral community. When it comes to capital punishment, you could use Cultural Relativist as a tool or guide. There are many people who fall into different types of groups when talking about capital punishment, there are some people who are pro-capital punishment and there are others who are against it. Capital punishment is defined as: the legally authorized killing of someone as punishment for a crime. There are many reasons to be pro-capital punishment for example; Safety is the first thing that comes to my mind, you have one less person to worry about ever going to cause harm or pain in the world ever again. The second is the cost of prison time, sending people away to prison is a lot more expensive today than it was years ago. This is where capital punishment comes into place. It is a lot cheaper to just execute someone then just send them to jail. When it comes to being against capital punishment this is where certain types of religions come into place, others may not believe in executing someone because their religion does not approve of that type of treatment. In other words, God simply would not support the idea of execution. Another example would be morality, the

at least when they were fried they felt a few minutes of pain to recompense for

“January 1999 - Pope John Paul II visits St. Louis, Missouri, and calls for an end to the death penalty” (Death Penalty Information Center). The Death Penalty is the punishment of execution, administered to someone legally convicted of a capital crime. In many states this punishment is legal, the rest of the 18 states eliminated this punishment and it's currently illegal. The race of the perpetrator, lifestyle, and certain people can determine ,or change, the way the criminal is sentenced. I think we should keep this punishment in the states, however some say it gives the government too much power, giving them ability to take lives. Why should the heartless criminal get to live when they, themselves, killed someone? This punishment gives closure

Murder and Capital Punishment are not the same thing. Murder is evil, while capital punishment is retribution. It’s hard to say exactly what is right and wrong a lot of the time. Do we define right and wrong as two lists of things that a community has almost arbitrarily split down the middle to label? Or do we label right and wrong as what we consider to be bad through means of trial and error? Even then, you can begin to ask more questions like how does one define “bad”, what is “bad” for one community but not for another, etc. Although the possibilities are rather endless for what is necessarily right or wrong, this may not be the case for what is evil. Currently, there is no known place where murdering somebody else in your community for violent intent - be that a tribe, village, state, or country – is considered acceptable or legal. This is an interesting concept, because the idea of morality is so fluid depending on what region or community you belong to. But if murder is never okay, then the question is why? Some parts of the world even find cannibalism to be acceptable, so why murder of all things? If murder is considered an evil, then there must be some way to make sure incredibly violent individuals can never kill again. This is why we need capital punishment, also known as the death penalty.

I found a chart on the website http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state. The chart on the site shows that murder rates were actually higher in states with the death penalty than in states that did not have the death penalty (Death Penalty Information Center, 2010). If the death penalty is a deterrent, wouldn’t these rates be reversed? In an article published in the New York Times entitled ABSENCE OF EXECUTIONS: A special report.; States With No Death Penalty Share Lower Homicide Rates, states that states who do have the death penalty actually have higher murder rates than the national average and in the past twenty years the rates have been found to be 48 to 101 percent higher than the states who do not have the death penalty (Bonner, Raymond and Fessenden, Ford, 2000). The article also states that as of 1998 Hawaii had the fifth lowest homicide rate in the nation and Hawaii is one of the states in which no death penalty is enforced (Bonner, Raymond and Fessenden, Ford, 2000). This illustrates to me that the death penalty in fact does not act as a deterrent for one to not commit violent crime. If it were a deterrent it would show that states with the death penalty had lower homicide rates than those states without the death penalty. There is also a statement in the article from John O’Hair, a Detroit District Attorney, that basically stated that

From an early age, children are taught that murder is morally wrong. In today’s complex society that is impeded by unsettling periods of civil unrest, it is an expectation for everyone to acknowledge and accept that murder is one of the worst crimes individuals can commit. Perhaps it can be said that the death penalty is one of our legal system’s biggest contradictions of itself, as, if someone commits murder (or another heinous crime of that caliber), such ‘murderers’ will, in states that have capital punishment laws, be sent to Death Row and ultimately murdered in order to prevent potential future crimes by such perpetrators. I believe that the death penalty is wrong not only as it is immoral to take a life, but also, such ineffective laws waste money and do not deter crime.

From the ethical perspective of philosopher John Rawls who said that justice should be described as“ a fair system of arrangements; one that the parties can agree to without knowing how it will benefit them personally” , the death penalty must be considered just and right as it creates a fair balance between the act that has been committed and the punishment that has been dealt (Williams 78). Rawls supports the idea of an original position from which society chooses principles based on a veil of ignorance, its ideal judicial system developed not from personal tastes and interests, but from a socially moral position. From this perspective, the death