Indian Penal Code 302:.............'to be hanged till death'! And the judge in his high seat signs with a grim face and breaks his pen. That blot of ink on that damned paper slowly transforms into drops of blood. Justice has been done and people may rest in peace. Wish it were so! The civilized world debates whether this is indeed...justice. The men who seat in high backed chairs and decree, the high priests of justice are demi gods. They kill....period! The Bible says that even God forgives. Who the hell is man to decide whether a person be allowed to live or not? What power, what authority entitles him to deal death at the scratch of a pen?The whole world awaits a judgement day. The mortal judges can hardly wait. Crimes are punishable and indeed , their intensities should vary with their heniousness. But to take away the right to live is against humanity. Imagine, dear reader, how it must feel to feel the rope press on your neck, the air suddenly rare, the crushing sensation on the spine. At a kerchief's drop, the lever moves and the man hangs in mid air, legs throwing frantically for some support, the pain unbearable till one hears the 'snap', the crack of the human neck! Where has the humanity vanished? Judgement was never meant to be so brutish. One of the most portent arguements against capital punishment is that we have no right to take something we cannot replenish.Life, the supreme and enigmatic benediction of God. We cannot provide one with it. What gives us the right to take it away? History says, there was a time in middle earth, when an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth , used to be the form of justice imparted. History also nomenclates that period as the 'dark ages', man was still on the threshold of civilisation. This is vengeance, not justice.It is barbaric in essence and is no better than 'street justice'. If this form of juvenile jurisdiction must prevail, legalise the underworld. After all they deal with equal fairness. Justice is not infalliable. It is administered by humans and errare humanum est. But this is like walking on quicksand. Here one mistake is irreversible. A man hangs and with that everything ends. What if it is later proved that someone goofed up, something went terribly wrong? No amount of repentance will make right that terrible wrong.
heinous crimes. Take in account the need for justice, (“An Eye for an Eye”) capital punishment carries
Savannah Lamb in her term paper, “An Eye for an Eye” explains that death is a godly thing, not something to be done by human hands. Lamb supports her claims by explaining the Death Penalty is an act of barbaric murder, and we teach our children that two wrongs do not make a right. So why do we contradict ourselves by sentencing people to the death penalty? The authors purpose is to suggest a better way to punish the criminal without sentencing the accused to death. The Author writes in a formal tone to the reader.
This country is determined to prove that killing someone under certain circumstances is acceptable, when in all reality there can be no rationalization for the taking of another human life. Killing is murder. It is as simple as that. There have been so many different controversies surrounding this debate that often, the issues become clouded in false statistics and slewed arguments. The basic fact remains that killing is morally and ethically wrong. This fact does not disappear by simply changing the term "murder" to "capital punishment". The act is still the taking of a life. On these grounds, the death penalty should be abolished.
The capital punishment has been cited as a reasonable sentence by those who advocate for retribution. This is essentially when it comes to justice so that people take full responsibility for their individual actions. Studies have proved that the decision to take away life of a person because they committed a certain crime serves to perpetuate the crime in question. It also serves to enhance the progress of organized and violent crime. It has been noted that various flaws in the justice system has led to the wrong conviction of innocent people. On the other hand, the guilty have also been set free, and a plethora of several cases has come up when a critical look at the capital punishment has been undertaken. Killers hardly kill their victims deliberately, but they probably act on anger, passion, or impulsively. In this regard, it is not proper to convict them exclusively without
In this paper I will argue for the moral permissibility of the death penalty and I am fairly confident that when the case for capital punishment is made properly, its appeal to logic and morality is compelling. The practice of the death penalty is no longer as wide-spread as it used to be throughout the world; in fact, though the death penalty was nearly universal in past societies, only 71 countries world-wide still officially permit the death penalty (www.infoplease.com); the U.S. being among them. Since colonial times, executions have taken place in America, making them a part of its history and tradition. Given the pervasiveness of the death penalty in the past, why do so few countries use the death penalty, and why are there American states that no longer sanction its use? Is there a moral wrong involved in the taking of a criminal’s life? Of course the usual arguments will be brought up, but beyond the primary discourse most people do not go deeper than their “gut feeling” or personal convictions. When you hear about how a family was ruthlessly slaughtered by a psychopathic serial killer most minds instantly feel that this man should be punished, but to what extent? Would it be just to put this person to death?
Throughout the history of man there has always existed a sort of rule pertaining to retribution for just and unjust acts. For the just came rewards, and for the unjust came punishments. This has been a law as old as time. One philosophy about the treatment of the unjust is most controversial in modern time and throughout our history; which is is the ethical decision of a death penalty. This controversial issue of punishment by death has been going on for centuries. It dates back to as early as 399 B.C.E., to when Socrates was forced to drink hemlock for his “corruption of the youth” and “impiety”.
In the beginning of Chapter 7, Lewis Vaughn challenges us with the question “Is it permissible for a society to put one of its members to death for committing a serious crime?” (Page 348). When people commit crimes no matter how bad, they should still be given rights. That being said opposing of the death penalty doesn’t overthrow the fact the victims did indeed break the law. Stephen Nathanson argues for this position, “those who commit terrible crimes still deserve some level of decent treatment simply because they remain living, functioning human beings”. He suggests that “by renouncing the use of death as punishment, we express and reaffirm our belief in the inalienable, unforfeitable core of human dignity” (Page 354).
I have also learnt that punishing someone in the Middle Ages was rather like making a horror movie or becoming a torturer with punishments often being aimed at extreme pain, terrible mutilation and humiliation even after a painful death. I have also learnt of many devices such as the gibbet, or the rack, and the common practice of displaying impaled heads on battlements as a terror tactic. All in all I have learnt that judgment in the Middle Ages was illogical and unreasonable, and punishment simply torturous and
First, people should know the history of the death penalty. The death penalty has a long history dating back to the 16th Century BC. "In 16th Century BC Egypt, a death sentence was ordered for members of nobility, who were accused of magic. They were ordered to take their own life. The non-nobility was usually killed with an ax"(Burns). During the 18th Century BC, King Hammurabi of Babylon had a code that arranged the death penalty for 25 different crimes although murder was not one of them (Burns).
...ach year, most after having served ten years on death row (Senna and Sigel 430). The opposition will say the monetary units cannot take the place or be substituted for human life. However, capital punishment is not a moral injustice. Look at what we kill. Lion’s and tigers: cause it’s fun. House fly’s and mosquito’s: cause their pests. Pheasants and quail: cause we’re hungry, and it’s fun. We rarely see a bumper sticker that says "save the roaches". So, at most, this sanctity of life that these anti-capital punishment people try to portray to us is selective. We get to deem which forms of life are sacred, and we get to kill the rest. Is this actually what we’re supposed to believe? If one is to argue that the death penalty is demoralizing to our values, then that person should take a look at our world.
Capital punishment is the legal and authorized killing of someone as punishment for a crime. The person can be sentenced to die by lethal injection, electrocution, gas chamber, a firing squad or hanging. Since 1976 over 1300 executions have taken place. Recently states have started abolishing the death penalty in favor of life in prison sentences. The death penalty is currently used in 32 states in the United States Capital punishment is a complicated moral decision that deserves research and discussion. First, we will examine the arguments in favor of capital punishment. Second, the ethical arguments against capital punishment. Third, the application of capital sentences. Lastly, we will discuss the moral and logical dilemma of capital punishment. Capital punishment is unethical and should be banned.
He argues that the only punishment possibly equivalent to death, the amount of inflicted harm, is death. Death is qualitatively different from any kind of life, so no substitute could be found that would equal death(6). The down side of the retributive system of just can be observed in our modern practices of zero tolerance laws. These laws have placed values of some wrongdoings so high that punishment for relatively minor offenses can see an offender detained for substantially longer than arguably needed to repay the harm they caused. Placing a grater demand on our prison facilities and creates a circle of offense and
Conforming to the correct rules of conduct, or moral values, reflect an individual’s views about life. Morality draws the dividing line between what is right and wrong. When developing an opinion toward the death penalty, one immediately drifts toward a certain side. Introduced to world justice systems early on, the death penalty became a means of punishment for those who committed crimes deemed as morally reprehensible. Although taking the lives of many, this frequently challenged action remains a controversial topic in modern American society. Essentially, the use of the death penalty not only defies the principles of living entitled to every human being, but the practice also reflects the decline in American society’s critical thinking process. The act of taking another human being’s life for the purpose of justice only satisfies immoral and vengeful attitudes. In order to create a more civilized and morally grounded society, the penalty of death as a means for punishment should be abolished.
Innocent lives have the possibility of being taken away as victims are wrongly accused due to faulty evidence. If a life is taken away you cannot just simply give it back as if it was a toy. Today, for the purpose of my speech my points will be defended from incidents that occurred in the United States, since it is the only North American country that still pursues the death penalty (Rawles). That is not to say that other countries do not believe in the death penalty because fifty-six of them still do. As of 2016, countries such as China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia still believe in this method of punishment. In fact, in the countries, I just mentioned executions are more prevalent, brutal and publicised (“Death Penalty Worldwide).” In these countries, crimes punishable by death include homosexuality, atheism, and drug
First, people should know the history of the death penalty. The death penalty has a long history dating back to the 16th Century BC. "In 16th Century BC Egypt, a death sentence was ordered for members of nobility, who were accused of magic. They were ordered to take their own life. The non-no...