Capital Punishment Should Not Be Abolished

The Death Penalty Should Not Be Abolished, written by Bruce Fein, is about Fein’s viewpoints and arguments that death penalty abolitionists are unpersuasive and do not stand up to close scrutiny. He also points out that  some crimes are so morally abhorrent and despicable that only the death penalty is adequate punishment for them.

Death penalty is a punishment of execution administered to someone legally convicted of a capital crime. Some say revenge is sweet but giving somebody the death penalty for killing someone else is bitter. It makes no sense to execute an individual that murdered another person. Capital punishment does not solve anything, nor does it fix the problem. We as humans should not dictate who leaves this world being that the gift of life is more sacred than a one-week trial. Instead of somebody coming back to life, now you have two dead people. There are many reasons as to why I believe the death penalty should be abolish. Some of these reasons are it is expensive, a person can be wrongful executed, and it does not deter crime.

The history from capital punishment starts back to colonial time’s .During the colonial times more than 15,000 people have been executed in the United States. The Capital punishment was first introduce early as biblical times for absolute assurance that a criminal 's life would end. The followers of Christianity and Judaism claimed to find justification for capital punishment in the Bible. According to the facts, in 1608, the first execution in the thirteen centuries was Captain George Kendall, he was executed for spying for the Spanish. In 1632 Jane Champion was the first women to be executed for unknown reasons .Surprisingly, Texas is the state that has a used capital punishment the most since 1976. In 1930 the executions average 167 per year, which was the highest in American history.

The death penalty, as we know it today, didn’t exist in the United States until 1976. However, the American penal system has incorporated capital punishment since the earliest settlements were founded in the early 1600’s. The first recorded execution in the United States occurred in 1608 in Jamestown, Virginia when Captain George Kendall was executed just one year after the Jamestown settlement had been established after he had been convicted of being a spy for Spain (Part I: History of the Death Penalty). Over the next 250 years, several states moved toward abolishing capital punishment altogether. While there has been serious push towards ending capital punishment, more than half of state governments within the United States cling onto their right to execute criminals who perform truly heinous crimes.

In this essay I will argue that capital punishment should be abolished in the United States. Capital punishment is a legal process where the state sends individuals, convicted of treason, murder, and terrorism just to name a few, to death row to be punished to their deaths by execution. Also known as the death penalty, these convicted prisoners are then put to death by such methods as a firing squad, gas chamber, electrocution, hanging, or lethal injection. All of which are lethal social injustices.

Death penalties are first recorded in the eighteenth century B.C.E. In the eleventh century C.E., William “the Conqueror” would only allow people to be hanged in cases of murder. In 1608, Captain George Kendall became the first recorded execution in the U.S. As the U.S. emerged as a sovereign nation, many questioned the use of the death penalty. By the nineteenth century, abolitionist believed that America had evolved morally and petitioned to have it repealed(DPIC). They had no success. Now, about 60 percent of the states in the U.S. have a death penalty, but some want it declared unconstitutional. In court cases, though, the Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty as constitutional. The debate will continue.

Abolitionist’s main argument is that capitol punishment can’t remove the evil from society. No matter what the juridical laws that a country holds, heinous crimes will haunt and spread fear throughout as long as mankind is on this earth. There have been numerous studies that have concluded that the death penalty is not a deterrent. One of which is from the National Academy of Sciences. They concluded: “it seems unthinkable to us to base decisions on

offender sentenced to “punishment by death” after the conviction of a capital crime (Oxford Living Dictionary). The death penalty dates all the way back to biblical times, but has encounter changes in method and reasoning since. In the United States, specifically, the first recorded execution took place in 1608, in the colony of Jamestown, where Captain George Kendall was executed by firing squad due to his spying for the country of Spain (Bohm; 1999). Fast forward to 1972, the United States Supreme Court declared that capital punishment was unconstitutional as it was being exercised at the time in the ruling of Furman v. Georgia (Lambert; 2011). Four years

Albert Einstein, a theoretical physicist and philosopher of science, once said, no problem can be solved with the same level of thinking that created it (Einstein). The intelligent man expressed his ideas clearly that if a killer kills someone and we also kill the killer then what would be the difference between us and the killer because we both are killers. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 31 States in the United States allow the death penalty and 19 states do not allow the death penalty (“Deterrence”). The death penalty should be abolished in our society because it is not an effective crime deterrent, it puts a strain on our economy, it may result in the loss of innocent lives, and it is racial discrimination.

"There are no do-overs if the death penalty is imposed by mistake". (Yahoo user) Capital punishment should be abolished because it puts innocent lives at risk for a crime they didn't commit due to poor defense, it violates medical ethnics, and it eliminates any chance of change such as rehabilitation. Even though revenge seems to be the answer to someone who has hurt us or someone we love, killing them isn't the answer.

Abolitionists claim life in prison is a justifiable punishment for murder. They say it violates the eighth amendment right which forbids “Cruel and Unusual Punishment”. Let’s examine the issue. Our founding fathers have never clearly defined the eighth amendment. According to the Justice of the Supreme Court, They say the death penalty is not cruel and/or unusual and is an acceptable form of punishment. Capital Punishment is morally justified. A crime is only as severe as the punishment that follows it. As Edward Koch wants said, “It is by exacting the highest penalty for the taking of human life that we affirm the highest value of human life." Abolitionists use the bible as a source of all morality and have taken many quotations from the bible out of context. One example abolitionists use is Matthews 7:1 Jesus said, “Judge not, that you be not judged" to say the death penalty contradicts Christian values. In order for us to sentence someone to death we have to judge them. If you look at the whole picture, Jesus was saying

Have you ever been punished for something that you ­did not do? What would you feel if someone sentenced you to death because of a crime that you absolutely had nothing to do with?

We ‘all’ live in a society with the same basic constitutional rights and guarantees. We have the right to life. We have the right to liberty. We also have the right of the pursuit of happiness with equal opportunities. This is the basis for our society established by the Declaration of Independence. Our founding Father’s declared that all men are created equal. It is the foundation on which all else is built on. Therefore, a person must be removed from society when they blatantly attack this foundation by murdering another, robbing them of the aforementioned rights. But does this necessarily mean that person should no longer live, should no longer exist?

The death penalty is a punishment of execution for a criminal that has convicted a serious crime. Crime rates go up throughout the years, but still the death penalty is not a way to find a solution to the world’s problems. Due that the death penalty costs more than sending a criminal to prison for 40 years, does not stop any form of crime, but it just increases it, and it is not a satisfying form of punishment. Therefore, the death penalty should be removed!

Capital crime is something that is meant for people that are found guilty of committing a serious crime, such as murder, rape, or theft. These are offences that should not be taken lightly but by killing the offender, the government is carrying about the action that they are trying to prevent. Also, the wrong person may be sentenced to death. After this person is executed, there is obviously nothing that can be done for the terrible mistake to be reversed. The death penalty should be abolished because it is more expensive than life imprisonment, numerous innocent people are condemned to death row, and it is cruel and inhumane.