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Capital Punishment
Table of Contents
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................7
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Outline
I. Introduction
II. Support
B. No sufficient alternative
III. Conclusion
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Capital Punishment
Jean Kwon
Michael Leonard
25 January 2011
Capital Punishment
First degree murders, first degree kidnapping, rape, aircraft hijacking and train
wrecking causing hundreds of deaths, and aggravated suicide. In all these examples, we see
cruel and unforgivable crimes being carried out, the harming and killing of innocent people
that do not deserve them. Justice is needed. For minor and most major crimes, such as theft,
bribery, forging, prostitution, drug dealing, the crime can be vindicated through a payment, a
number of years in prison, etc. What about those crimes that are too horrid, too immoral, too
extreme to be made up for? How can anything make up for a cruel murder of an individual or
a mass number of lives? For example- Athe rape of a young child? A terrorist act that could
possibly destroy an entire city? There is no punishment that matches up to such deeds, except
for capital punishment. Capital punishment, otherwise known as the death penalty, is defined
as “the killing of a person via judicial for retribution or incapacitation”, or “the act of killing
or executing a person who was found guilty of a certain crime.” The root of capital
punishment is to satisfy the only condition that will give justice to the crime punishable in no
other way. Therefore, the United States of America should not abolish capital punishment for
certain crimes.
Many argue against capital punishment with the claim that killing a person is
inhumane and immoral. Contrary to the common belief of society, however, it is justified.
What provides this justification is the something called the ripple effect, or the domino effect.
This effect is brought into play when the fulfillment of one right affects the fulfillment of
another. If one right is satisfied, another right is rejected, and vice versa. This effect applies
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directly to the debate over capital punishment. The right of life of a person is present, but so
is the right to justice of the victim, stated in the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of
Rights. If the death penalty is forbidden to preserve the right of life of the criminal, then at
the same time, the victim’s right for justice is denied. In such scenario, in which the criminal
has committed such brutal crimes against society, the rights of the innocent victim or victims
need to be strongly noticed. And to sustain these rights, the only measure that can be taken to
assure justice is capital punishment for the criminal. The logic for giving a punishment
equivalent to the crime is called “eye for eye” justice. When there are no suitable or
appropriate punishments that match up for the crime, the death penalty is necessary to
maintain justice.
If justice is to be maintained, but the death penalty is denied, what is the alternative?
A lifetime sentence in prison is a final and most severe punishment a criminal can receive,
other than execution. However, society does not show much opposition towards this
punishment. Why is a lifetime sentence to prison acceptable when a death penalty is not?
People answer this by defending the rights of a person to his or her life. One important thing
we have failed to consider is that there is only a minimal difference between a lifelong
sentence and an immediate execution. For someone looking forward to being imprisoned his
or her whole life, the coming of death is only a matter of time. All they have left is a long
time of restrictions, depression, and suffering. We cannot argue that the death penalty
shouldn’t be used when the other option is simply delaying the death. Although nobody
directly kills the criminal, the criminal is forced to suffer and is killed by hunger, age, mental
or physical difficulty, etc. It is illogical that we spend money and effort only to keep waiting
recovery or rehabilitation. What a prison does for temporary prisoners is that it punishes as
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well as gives a second chance for release. With a lifelong imprisonment, the criminal does
not receive this second chance. Nothing that the criminal does can improve his situation.
There is no reconciliation with society. Even if the prisoner does change for the better, there
is nothing that can be done to release him from his coming death. One good example is the
case of Stanley Tookie Williams. Mr. Williams was convicted of four murders in 1979, and
he was sentenced to capital punishment. He was also a leader of a deadly street gang, called
the Crip, which was responsible for hundreds of murders. Five years after his sentencing,
however, he had a strong religious conversion. After that, he wrote many books and lead
programs for peace and against gangs. His works received many times the Nobel Peace Prize
and Nobel Literature Prize. However, because there was unmistakable evidence that he had
committed the four murders, he was put to death on December 13th of 2005 through a lethal
injection by the state of California. Even though Williams had proved that he became good
later on, there was nothing that could redeem him from his death. This idea supports logic
that a death sentence is a death sentence, whether carried out immediately or delayed, and a
Rejecting capital punishment may also cause danger. Criminals who receive the death
penalty are typically violent individuals that would do violent deeds. Their being in prison
may harm the safety of the prison guards and other prisoners. A Brazilian prisoner called
Hosmany Ramos threatened the prison guards with a sharp homemade weapon in trying to
escape. An Ipswich man announced to threaten the prison guard by shooting him as he “knew
where he lived.” There is also chance that these prisoners could escape and again cause harm
to the general public. About 2000 or more prisoners per year have escaped from prisons all
over the United States, showing that the possibility of prison escape is not rare. Capital
punishment ensures that there is no chance of the criminal committing another crime3.
The death penalty is already carried out in many American states, such as Texas,
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Virginia, Oklahoma, California, Florida, etc. Each state has varied laws for certain
conditions, methods, age limits and crimes which qualify. All we need to do is decide if the
capital punishment is acceptable and applicable to certain unforgivable crimes. Think once
more in the victim’s perspective. If your family member, your parents, your siblings, or your
grandparents had been murdered violently. If your own young child has been kidnapped and
forcefully raped. And if the only way to punish the criminal was to sentence him to a few
years of imprisonment? The government would be miserably failing to fulfill the rights of its
citizens.
In many situations like this, extreme measures have to be taken for justice. Rights
clash against one another, but here we decide which are more reasonable. If the life of a
criminal who has done cruel and unforgivable deeds gets in the way of justice and safety, and
if we choose to spare his life using “the right to life” as our only defense, then we are failing
to look at the bigger picture. Therefore, the United States should not abolish capital