Death Penalty: Barbarism or Exacting Justice

To customer: I have chosen to write for the imposition of the death penalty for the reasons that are clearly prevalent in society as we clearly can witness. The presence of unmitigated violence in our day and age seem to justify the imposition of the capital punishment on criminals who have displayed wanton disregard for the law and the rights of the citizenry as a whole.

My view is that criminals should be held liable for their actions and be made to pay the ultimate penalty if that is what the law of the land states, and if the crime which they are being tried warrants the imposition such.The process took me to research the arguments for and against the death penalty. I had to do this in order to present a clear and precise opinion of the favor ability of the imposition of capital punishment. What struck me the most was the arguments to the sector that favored the abolition of capital punishment that was premised on the belief in compassion and rehabilitation rather than punishment. I believe that it is harsher to jail one for a long period of time than executing the offender,to send a strong signal to the society as a whole that crime will be dealt with harshly and sternly.But we must be careful to separate justice and retribution.

Again, I would support the imposition of capital punishment, for the reasons that the clear and simple availability of such a device will be effective rather than not having one at all. Writer "Death Penalty in Modern times: Barbarism or Exacting justice? " The imposition of the death penalty, or capital punishment in legal parlance, has driven a wedge between those who advocate the use of the death penalty on several instances and tend to justify them by religious as well as moral grounds.Yet there are factions in our society that also use the exact same moral basis in condemning the use of the capital punishment, calling it a step back into the Dark Ages, when people could just slice off one's head or skewer them when they have broken the law. I take the stand that the use of the capital punishment should be enforced in these times, not only as a response to the widening moral vacuum that is currently plaguing the society as a whole but also to address the apathy that we seem to have grown accustomed in the everyday life that we exist in.

The imposition of the death penalty not only, I believe, is a strong deterrent to the commission of the crime, but to the would-be offenders as well. The hardest part would seem to be the irony that the use of the death penalty is that its use is meant to preserve the moral sanctity of the body politic as against the exercise of compassion on the offending individual. Those who advocate the abolition or non-practice say that it is state-sanctioned murder. But is that the case?Is the imposition of the death penalty or capital punishment in individuals who break the law and are found guilty of doing such by the courts of that society, after careful and thoughtful deliberation, victims of the crime that allegedly the states perform and that the state, after consummating the deed, hide itself from the implications of its act and cloak itself with the moral ground that what it did was in the interest of the greater whole? Many discussions have revolved against and for the practice of the death penalty.Hopefully we can pin down some of the valid, or invalid arguments that should support the view for the imposition of the death penalty. We must look at the persons and their insights to the reasons they also believed in the imposition and the withdrawal of the ultimate punishment available to society today.

1 According to Italian political theorist Cesare Beccaria( 1738-1794), capital punishment is not necessary to deter, and long term imprisonment is a more powerful deterrent since execution is transient.According to Beccaria, the method of punishment should be that which that serves the greatest public good. For him, the purpose of punishment is to create a better society, not for revenge, or from another point of view, retribution,(www. utm. edu).

His belief is that punishment as a visible deterrent to those who would think of committing a crime, thereby preventing its commission, and stop would-be offenders. This is of a Utilitarian point of view, that the use of capital punishment is justified if it serves a greater value than if it is not done at all,to create a greater balance for unhappiness than happiness.From this standpoint, capital punishment is justified if, (1). it prevents the criminal from repeating the offense, or (2). it discourages would-be criminals. (www,utm.

edu). Many have not adhered to this line of thinking, especially those aligned with the religious sector of our society. They counter that the continuous use of the death penalty law is counter to the teachings of mercy and compassion as taught by their religious beliefs. (www. religioustolerance.

org)[2].For them, rehabilitation is better than the execution of the offender. They fail to recognize that in the Scriptures, rehabilitation is not seen as the means of exacting justice upon the law-breaking individual, it is execution. They also forget that the criminal is CAPABLE of retribution or avenging himself when he gets the opportunity to do so, that in the Scriptures, rehabilitation is not seen as the means of exacting justice upon the law-breaking individual, it is execution.