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Essay On Capital Punishment And Religion

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Religion plays a big role in some people 's lives and can influence their opinion on capital punishment. In the U.S. the two largest religions are Christianity and Judaism, within both of those religions some people are for capital punishment and some are against capital punishment. Several christian groups in the late 1970s formalized their religious and moral reasons against the imposition of the death penalty. “Among them was, capital punishment: violated the command by Jesus to employ the ethic of love, perpetuated the evil of retaliation, ignored the guilt that the society may have had in the causation of the crime, and prevented the possibility of any kind of rehabilitation of the criminal” (Flamehorse).

Some practicing Jewish …show more content…

The system works that the criminal does the crime, the criminal gets caught, tried and convicted, and it is understood that the punishment will be severe. The person the criminal has killed no longer has a part to play in this. Unfortunately the murderer has deprived their family and friends of a loved one. Their grief begins with the murder. “It may not end with the murderer’s execution, but the execution does engender a feeling of relief at no longer having to think about the ordeal- a feeling which often fails to arise while the murder still lives on” (The Facts). the system in place currently is there for the purpose of granting justice, cannot do so for the surviving victims, unless the murderer himself is put to death (The Facts).

For some criminals the death penalty is the only thing they fear. A great example of this is Ted Bundy. Bundy was born November 24th, 1946 in Burlington, Vermont. In the 1970s, he raped and murdered young women in several states. He was connected to at least 36 murders, but some though he had committed 100 or more. He has since been executed in Florida’s electric chair in 1989 (Ted Bundy). Leading up to the execute Bundy waited nine years in prison for his execution. They say that Bundy exhausted every single legal point he and his lawyers could think of, all in an attempt to spare his execution. He “defended” himself in prision interviews by blaming porography for causing his uncontrollable

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