Capital Punishment

The former Nebraska Governor, Sr. Frank Morrison on Capital Punishment quotes, "I have known many presidents, governors, judges, legislators, and policy makers - including myself - and have never known a person wise enough to decide who should live and who should die"(Frank B. Morrison, Sr., Nebraska Governor, 1961-1967). Capital Punishment is a lawful way of inflicting death on a person as a punishment for committing crimes that may include, murder, rape, drug trafficking, kidnapping, etc. Such infamous death penalty is a major debatable as well as a controversial issue in today's world, where the argument is whether such punishments are ethical or not.

The word 'capital' in "capital punishment" refers to a person's head. In the past, people were often executed by severing their head from their body. Capital Punishments or executions were also carried out either by hanging, electrocution, lethal injection, or by the firing squad. It first started in England by the 1500s and later on spread to other parts of Europe. Capital Punishments are practiced in America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, where most still retain the death penalty for certain crimes and impose it with varying frequency. But nowadays most prisoners are executed by lethal injection, which means that they are injected with six grains of Morphine, claimed as a better substitution to hanging and shooting. But putting a person to death is murder, it doesn't matter whether you hang the person or inject him with poison, he's still dying. It's the people who have to decide, whether such punishments should be inflicted upon the criminals or should they be left to live with their mistakes and guilt.

The South Korean lawmaker Yoo Ihn-Tae condemns Capital Punishment, saying "The death penalty is a cruel and inhumane punishment that violates the fairness, appropriateness, not to mention the balance of the benefit and protection of the law."(Ihn-Tae, Yoo). Many countries today still practice Capital Punishment or Death Penalty, with the recent being in Iran, where a man was hanged in front of locals after being whipped and pelted with stones. That man had committed some hideous crimes, which included rape and murder. True, the crimes committed were of sadistic nature, and for that he was humiliated in public, but why the death penalty. Rightly said by Rachel Muha, whose son, college student Brian Muha, was abducted and murdered by three armed intruders, in the book "A mother's tale: A story of love, forgiveness and life credo", by Nick Thomm, "The death penalty is the ultimate act of pride: declaring oneself God. It is evil."(Muha, Rachel). Also, the crimes have been committed and loved ones are lost and nothing, not even the criminal's death could bring the victims back or make the lives of those who lost their loved ones any easier.

Another reason against continuing Death Penalty is, that most of the times it is the innocent people who are executed and there is no possible way of compensating them for this miscarriage of justice. Sometimes, a person might have killed the other person and instead of labeling it as manslaughter, which could arise out of situations, such as self-defense, the person is convicted for murder and maybe executed.

Usually we think about the family of those who are murdered but very easily overlook the trauma and the sadness that the families of the criminal go through. Imagine, the loss a family would feel, on the realization of their loved one's crime and then the Capital Punishment inflicted upon. When Ms.Pooja Gaad, my colleague was asked whether Capital Punishment in today's society should be practiced or not, and she answered that, "To kill people who have killed people, whether that's government-sponsored or otherwise, is feeding a cycle of violence."(Personal Interview)

Also Capital Punishment in some countries is labeled as the game of the powerful. For example, in U.S., a prisoner would be on his death row for many years awaiting the outcome, and the chances for the wealthy are much higher to escape execution than that of the poor. Also there is racial discrimination, whereby, a white prisoner would have better chances to escape Capital Punishment than the black prisoner, but to what extent this is true, is not known. According to Eddie Hicks, whose oldest daughter was murdered, "Murder in the name of the state is still murder."(Hicks, Eddie)

Lastly, capital punishments inflicted on adolescents or better-called juvenile death penalty is one of the most barbaric practices of the 21st century. Its been proved that adolescents do not have the ability to think clearly or prevent any aggressive behavior from protruding out and so, such laws should be outlawed from the constitution. Few examples of those countries where adolescents were executed on crimes other than murder. In Singapore, two girls were hanged, aged 18 year olds for drug trafficking during 1995. In China, an 18-year-old girl was shot for the same offence. All those People who argue that by performing lethal injection on the accused is a more humane method than compared to others; do not really know what fear is. It is not the suffering and the pain, but the thought of death itself is terrifying and is a gruesome ordeal for the criminal.

Every coin has its two sides. If there is a side that is against the practice of Capital Punishment, then there is another side, which insists that such death penalty is necessary in this growing world of crimes. With execution of the criminals, there comes a surety that the worst criminals are wiped out, and helps in ensuring that the crime rates are low.

Also, money is another main factor, whereby instead of spending it on long-term prisoners who are awaiting execution, the money can be spent on better things and resources. It is more economical for the government to give away with Capital Punishment to the accused, rather than imprison, which costs more. For example, in American legal system, the average time spent on death row is over 11 years. The U.S. Supreme Court has commented on Capital Punishment, saying "Indeed, the decision that capital punishment may be the appropriate sanction in extreme cases is an expression of the community's belief that certain crimes are themselves so grievous an affront to humanity that the only adequate response may be the penalty of death." (U.S. Supreme Court)

The Death Penalty is not seeking revenge, but in fact a real punishment, where the criminal suffers in accordance with the crime committed. Even though a lot of people see retribution as an acceptable reason for death penalty, many others think otherwise. Justice Arthur Chaskalson, President of the South African Constitutional Court; in a 1995 decision declared South