Capital Punishment

8 Pages 2115 Words

or injection? The end result is the same, a person is dead, and it is very much a premeditated act carried out in a very mechanical, systematic way. In some respects, capital punishment is no better than the actions of a serial killer; it is killing for the sake of killing. I feel that if a person is deemed to be a threat to society then he should be removed from society and not be permitted to live in society. When you make a man or a woman sit for years on death row, not knowing from one day to the next if they will live or die, then I feel that this is cruel and unusual punishment. According to human rights activist Stephen Bright, “Life is the most fundamental human right there is, the death penalty is like torture – it’s beyond the pale. Most people say it’s not right to cut a thief’s fingers off but it’s ok to cut off their head?” (Beaudoin 3).
The next argument that proponents of the death penalty will espouse is that the death penalty is a deterrent to future murders. Interestingly enough there are many district attorneys who do not believe that the death penalty is a deterrent to murder, and who are opposed to the death penalty. These are people who deal with murderers and other criminals every day. In the New York Times Special Report, this article indicates that 10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average, while Federal Bureau of Investigation data shows, that half the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above the national average (Bonner 1). As I stated before, the majority of murders are not ...