Captial Punishment

An Eye for an Eye: Capital Punishment

Capital punishment, the death penalty, provides the maximum consequence used in punishing people who kill another human being. Those convicted of first-degree murder may get sentenced to the death penalty. Murder is defined as the unlawful killing of another human being with an intentional or criminal intent ("Murder"). Capital punishment has always represented a controversial issue in the United States because of its inhumane nature, but as technology has advanced, the justice system has come up with better and more humane ways to carry out the death penalty. I'm support the death penalty; I believe that if a person commits one of the heinous capital crimes, then that person should die. Coming from a death penalty state may have a slight impact with my position on the issue since the punishment has always seemed an option around me. According to Ernest V. Haag, in an average year about 20,000 homicides occur in the United States, and fewer than 300 of the convicted murderers get sentenced to death (Death Penalty: Pro and Con). Many different theories exist on why or why not the death penalty seems just, and everyone has his/her own opinions on the issue.

Casey Carmical gives a good argument in defense of the death penalty, criticizing a common bumper sticker with the saying, "We kill people to show people that killing people is wrong (Death Penalty: Morally Defensible?)." She explains that the death penalty does not punish people for killing. To quote Carmical, "Killing is justified when it is done in self-defense. Killing means to cause death. Murder, on the other hand, is defined as, Ð''the unlawful and malicious or premeditated killing of one human being by another (Death Penalty: Morally Defensible?).'" The death penalty offers the only real punishment that society can use to threaten prospective murderers and the most secure form of incapacitation. If a murderer gets executed, he/she cannot commit any crime again, whereas convicts who face life in prison seem less intimidated because eventually, if they keep up good behavior, they can get out on parole and commit the same crime all over again, making sure not to get caught. According to Dudley Sharp, most living murderers do, in fact, continue to kill again and again if they get released (Do We Need the Death Penalty?). In contrast, Martin O'Malley, governor of Maryland, said that "In 2005, the murder rate was 46% higher in states that had the death penalty than in states without it... (2A)." O'Malley also gives some other startling statistics showing that the murder rates declined 56% in non-death penalty states since 1990 and only 38% in the states with the death penalty, providing significant proof that the death penalty may not deter people from murdering or committing capital crimes.

The morality of the death penalty seems often questioned. How is killing a man/woman who knowingly and decisively murders another human being morally wrong? If a dog just attacks a person, it gets put to sleep without question, and humans feel no injustice in doing so. I cannot comprehend why anybody would argue with this punishment. The innocent murdered victims do not deserve to die, so why should their murderers live out their own contemptible lives? The murderer earned the punishment of death by the pain and suffering he imposed on his victim(s): "Execution cannot truly represent justice, because there is no recompense to balance the weight of murder (Do We Need the Death Penalty?)." Although society can never truly have justice, capital punishment represents the only fair punishment available. On the other hand,