Is the Death Penalty Ethical? Essay examples

This research led them to some conclusions and one of these conclusions was that we can be sure that the death penalty does not cause or eliminate large numbers of homicides or other sort’s of violence in the United States or Canada. This led them to further conclusions that the death penalty is an unethical way of reducing crime. This study was looking directly at interpreting the correlation between the sum of crimes committed and the amount of executions carried out. According to the findings…

such needless suffering. Capital punishment used to be a routine universal practice. The torrid history surrounding executions dates back thousands of years and includes the majority of civilizations around the world. Throughout history, the death penalty has been utilized as a tool to manage society. Hammurabi, a successful Babylonian king, established what many scholars thought to be the first code of laws. Charles F. Horne, author of “The Code of Hammurabi,” explains: “The code . . . regulates…

In the present day of America the death penalty has diminished greatly in its use to a point where it is almost never used in most states and most other countries accept a select bunch, have also adhered to this same philosophy. (deathpenaltyinfo.org) It is with this understanding of the death penalty’s history that one can start to decide what a valid application (if any) of the death penalty. BEGINNING TO LOOK AT THE ARGUMENTS REGARDING THE DEATH PENALTY On one end of the argument…

the perpetrator. A final argument posed by proponents of the death penalty is that execution is an effective deterrence. They are convinced that potential murderers will likely think twice before they commit murder. Despite the rhetoric of politicians for the increased use of the death penalty, a number of prominent individuals and organizations have emerged to express their opposition to capital punishment. Along with families of death row prisoners, the International Court of The Hague, the United…

then ethical to sentence a person with undeveloped reasoning and thinking skills to the death penalty if they cannot fully comprehend the consequences of their actions? If adolescents are being considered to have diminished reasoning and thinking skills, how then do they compare the mentally ill? Do the same standards apply? If so, then the case of Atkins v. Virginia, in which it was declared by the U.S. Supreme Court that the mentally handicapped would not be sentenced to the death penalty, would…

This is also known as an eye for an eye punishment. Although I agree that the criminal deserves rash punishment morale and ethical values come into play. Another great saying is two wrongs don’t make a right. The idea of punishing violence with violence essentially condones the use of violence. This has not yet been definitively determined but the fact that the government utilizes violence in a sense condones the use of it. At the very least, it may make it seem that vigilante justice is acceptable…

Fewer and fewer American judges are turning towards the punishment of death in court cases. Many moral and ethical standards require justices to think extensively about their judgments before acting on them. The thought of sending a person to die is a very gruesome one to face, no matter how strong someone may be. As Michael Endres stated, "The execution of an offender is the most certain way to incapacitate him...the death penalty is not, of course, the only way to achieve this end" (Endres 19). Equally…

People opposed to the death penalty also point to the fact that over half of the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty, including all other major industrialized, democratic nations. In the five countries with the highest homicide rates that do not impose the death penalty, the murder rate is 21.6 murders per 100,000 people. In the five countries with the highest homicide rates that do impose the death penalty, the murder rate is 41.6 murders per 100,000 people ("Deterrence"). Furthermore…

Against the Death Penalty “Murder is wrong” (“Capital Punishment”). We’ve been taught this indisputable truth since childhood. The death penalty is defined as one human taking the life of another. Coincidentally, that is a classification of murder. There are as many as thirty-six states with the death penalty, and it’s essential that they change it. The United States needs the death penalty abolished because it is filled with flaws, cruel and immoral, and is an ineffective means of deterrent…

Additionally, because the death penalty is such an ultimate decision, the number of court trials required to follow through with the sentence builds up significant costs as well. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, the elimination of the death penalty would be beneficial due to the economic ease it would bring. The death penalty is inefficient means of punishment in both process and methodology. Due process by which criminals are tried is a lengthy and elaborate process. Convicts can make repeated…