Death penalty Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Death penalty - Essay Example This paper will examine the benefits and the fall backs of the death penalty, and argue if it should be allowed or banned based on the evidence in the paper. According to Chan and Oxley, capital punishment is a legal process sanctioned by the state that allows for the termination of a felon offender’s life, who has committed one or multiple heinous offences (Janet and Oxley 2). This process is usually prohibited in many countries for the same questions that this paper raises and seeks to answer. Is capital punishment morally wrong? Does capital punishment deter crime? Can capital punishment be justified when done in consideration to the welfare of the public? Many people have found the death penalty or capital punishment to be morally wrong but when atrocities are committed against their loved ones, they quickly have a change of heart. Over the years, there has been a growing base of activists advocating for the abolishment of the death penalty all across the world, therefore, influencing many countries to abolish the act. Even the United Nations does not support the death penalty, citing a law borrowed from the American Bill of Rights, which stresses on the right to life. However, the United States of America has not given in to International pressure to abolish the death penalty but insists that the death penalty is neither cruel nor an unusual punishment when it is employed non-discriminatively and in an unarbitrary manner (Dezhbakhsh and Shepherd 512). Many individuals consider the death penalty to be morally impermissible. They argue that the act is constitutionally cruel and uncivilized. They claim that imposing capital punishment, no matter how humane the method of administration is, is still a transgression of the rule of law. They also say that capital punishment would lead to the wrongful death by execution to some innocent people whose cases were marred by false evidence. They argue that if the justice system was to make a mistake and realize it later after the death penalty has already been executed, the damage would be irreversible and unfair to the family and the individual. They also argue that capital punishment shows arbitrariness, in that the criminals may prefer that form of punishment. Capital punishment has also been said to be discriminative. Critics argue that racial discrimination is evident in the justice system, where criminals declared guilty of killing white people were four times more likely to be served with the death penalty than those who killed non-white individuals. This shows that the death penalty is discriminative even though it is said to be non-discriminatory (Sunstein and Vermeule 2). Capital punishment seems to have a few shortcomings but despite all that it can be regarded as an efficient tool to deter the occurrence of certain crimes. Research studies carried out two decades ago showed that the death penalty did not prevent or influence the occurrence of certain crimes. These research stud ies have refuted by new research that show that capital punishment has a powerful deterrent effect. The study proposes that for every execution carried out, an average of eighteen murders are prevented. With such an effect on crime, capital punishment should not be abolished as it seems to serve as a lesson to all those plotting some heinous crimes. Failing