Capital Punishment and Civilized Society Essay

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Do you have death penalty in your country? The definition of death penalty is the use of death as a legally sanctioned punishment. The death penalty is a method of punishment for murder and other heinous crimes. Most countries have abolished the death penalty and most others use it rarely if ever. Some people support abolishing the death penalty because they believe it is cruel in a civilized society and it is also a kind of murder. However, a few remaining countries like China, the U.S, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan still regularly put people to death. They think the death penalty is a means of retribution for murder and it is deterrence. The death penalty is still a topic of argument that many people discuss, and whether the government abolishes the death penalty has become a controversy. I think that the government should abolish the death penalty because it is too cruel, unfair to the poor, and may result in the killing of innocent people. Governments should abolish the death penalty because it is a cruel, barbaric and uncivilized practice. It punishes murderers by killing and encourages violence. John O’Sullivan says “The death penalty is sometimes the only punishment that seems equal to the horror of a particular crime—a cold-blooded poisoning” (402). Murderers should be given the deserved punishment such as live in prison or monetary compensation, but not the death penalty. And we should give them time to reflect on their mistakes instead of killing them. If you kill a murderer that won’t bring their victims back, it won’t change anything and it doesn’t fulfill the purpose of supporting the law. Also, many people are Christian and they believe in God. God encourages us to forgive, as long as you ask for forgiveness, and entreats you to forgive those who trespass against us. Therefore, the death penalty is too cruel for religious morals. At the same time, the death penalty is a relentless law that contradicts the law itself, which states that every person is endowed with inalienable rights. The death penalty doesn’t conform to a civilized and modern society. Governments have a responsibility to protect the lives of citizens including murderers. I like many others, believe that the death penalty is incompatible with a civilized society because a civilized society rejects capital punishment (O’Sullivan 405). The death penalty doesn’t adapt to a civilized society and the civilized society should reduce the rate of crime and decrease murders. Only building a civilized society can improve the moral quantity of citizens. If people live in an uncivilized society, they might be unmoral and have wrong value. There is no doubt that the death penalty is cruel and uncivilized, and so government should abolish capital punishment. Besides the cruelty of the death penalty, it is unfair for the poor, and this is another reason why it should be abolished. The poor sometimes get unfair judgment because the jurors have bias against them. For example, if a hobo, and a rich person are both tried in court, the probability of the hobo being convicted of the crime is higher than the rich person because the hobo doesn’t have job and income. Even though they can get fair judgments, expensive lawyers use delays to stop executions. The death penalty always happened in the death penalty. Joshua Green states “The average delay from sentencing to execution has grown from six years in 1985, to eight years in 1990, to 11years today” (395). Many lawyers of murderers use delay tactics to stop an execution and continue to appeal. A typical example from “Deadly Compromise”, a murderer called Robert Alton Harris killed two California teenagers and was sentenced to death in 1979. But his lawyers delayed his execution for 13 years by repeatedly manipulating the appeals system. Finally, the court against overturned the Harris’s appeals and he was put to death in 1992 (Green). This is unfair for everyone, especially for
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