Killing People Is Wrong

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Pages: 6

Hanged for Justice

Crime is always existent in every country even among the most peaceful ones. Criminals are everywhere. But is it already enough just to put them in chains for many years? We need something more that will give discipline to these people. Death penalty or capital punishment is used to kill a person for committing a crime so immoral that it is not enough just to send the criminal to prison. A popular saying says, “We kill people to show people that killing people is wrong.” But is irony really present in this punishment as the slogan implies? Those who do not like death penalty equate execution and murder. They believe that if two acts have the same ending or result, then they are morally equivalent. This is a morally unacceptable
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One out of the twenty Oregon murderers [unleashed] in 1979 found that he committed a [following] homicide within five years prior to their release. Another study in the US found that of 11,404 persons originally convicted of "willful [murder]” and released during 1965 and 1974, 34 were returned to prison for commission of a [following] criminal homicide during the first year alone. Even those who were not let out but still serve life terms, murder again (police officers, other inmates).

Had these prisoners been executed, innocent lives would have been saved. The death penalty is, without question, a deterrent to murder. Death penalty is not a cruel and unusual punishment.

“But what happens to the innocents condemned to death?”

The Fifth Amendment (United States) provides that “No persons shall be held to answer for a capital crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury nor be deprived of life without the due process of law” This clearly permits the death penalty to be valuable law and establishes beyond doubt that the death penalty is not one of the 'cruel and unusual punishments' prohibited by the Eighth Amendment (United