“Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.” Confucius. Society has all sorts or rules, norms, and values. However, we don’t all necessarily share these common. Ideally, laws embody rules made by society to protect the weak and enforce a common standard. They represent a binding contract between citizens. When we imagine a world where everyone does just what they want, chaos and anarchy remains; at which point none of us would know where we stand when we do things. Fortunately, society has long established and continues to reinforce the importance of rules and structure. In effect, laws make us all responsible to society and its betterment. Everything about daily life is affected by law, whether we like it or not. Laws, good or bad, are essential to society; our “communities”, as we know them, would cease to exist outside this fact. Nevertheless, since humans are not perfect, “human laws”, whatever its source or intended impact/ remedy, are intrinsically flawed. History is consistent with this fact. Laws set “appropriate behaviors”, but “appropriate” is subjective to conditions, time, power, and/ or struggles. While we don’t want to live without laws and, God forbid, become animals, there are laws that should be changed. History proves how laws can often unfairly discriminate against particular groups of people based on race, gender, and/ or sexual orientation. The theory of law is far from the reality of its application. There has been gross misconduct on the part of many of the so called representatives of the law. Preferably, everyone should live under a fair legal system, and in court take part in a process that is unbiased and impartial. I have long been against the death penalty; a law which I believe should be abolished across the United States. Laws are enacted because the society as whole benefits, but I am not able to reconcile the benefit behind punishing another human being to death. Is law about retribution or protection/ safety? When we punish those that have broken the law, how harsh should the consequences be? Law should be more concerned with protecting people than punishing them. Capital punishment is a form of retribution that in essence attempts to validate taking another human’s life.
Capital punishment is based on reprisal rather than protection and safety. At the point which an inmate is executed, he/she has already been permanently removed from society, no longer posing a threat. Certainly, everyone has the right to life, even inmates. I make the point that capital punishment is based on revenge and retaliation because the government can achieve keeping society safe from harm without taking another life. Those who support the death penalty argue that any persons willing to take the lives of others are predators and unfit to live amongst members of society. However, this is the function of the penitentiary system. Any instrument use for death, whether in the hands of the state or a citizen, should be illegal. Capital punishment is not a “prudent” step or an act of justice by law. It is treating a person according to how they act, and to do that one must commit the same act. The criminal takes a life and in turn the state takes a life. Murder begets murder in essence. Capital punishment is based on nothing more than revenge. I see nothing to differentiate laws like this from laws potentially allowing individuals citizens to take the law into their own hands. It is right to punish criminals, but in no cases is capital punishment appropriate. Revenge does not equal justice. Premeditated murder does not justify premeditated execution by the government. The idea that the reaction should fit the action is not an argument based on legality and justice; it is solely a matter of revenge and retaliation. Capital punishment is harsh and unusual punishment. It is immoral and illegal for any government to justify murder with murder. There is not a legal justification for such an action. What is the significance of a law which ceases to remedy and reinforce standards in society? The significance of the death penalty is that it lends its purpose to affecting a “loss” felt by members in society. With capital punishment, I believe that we have crossed the line between protecting the public and justifying legalized homicide. In respect to that, capital punishment merits to be abolished.
The use of capital punishment is a growing concern for most people. Controversy of whether to abolish it or not, creates moral confusion. On one hand it brings justice, yet on the other hand it takes a life. This is a topic that sparks passion within people about the equality and effectiveness of the judicial system. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion about this topic. According to the online Webster dictionary death penalty is defined as the “judicially ordered execution of a prisoner as a punishment for a serious crime, often called a capital offence or a capital crime”. The amounts of problems associated with death penalty are massive, ranging from the innocent dying for a crime he/she never committed to racism. After examining one will likely conclude that there is a great necessity for death penalty to be abolished.
What people should acknowledge in the heated debate over capital punishment is that they are dealing with values of capital importance such as respect for the dignity of a human person, the protection of the human life, the maintenance of order in the society, and the accomplishment of justice through law. In confronting the problem of violent and serious crime in the society, the lives and the sense of security of those members of the society who may become the victims of crime must be protected. Unlike many people might think, the problem of violent and serious crime is deeper and complex. This is a problem of society; therefore we cannot expect simple or easy solutions to a complex problem, and even less we cannot rely on death penalty to provide such a solution. A problem cannot be resolved without a better understanding of it. Thus we need to go to the base and looking for the origin of this problem and come with a durable solution and also take appropriate measures that will permit the eradication of this problem. If we think we must only kill a person because he/she kills another person, the problem of violent and serious crime will never resolve.
Allowing for the fact that the principle that the government has the right to kill a person convicted of murder has been accepted, and that the government may take appropriate measures to protect the society from grave harm, anyway, today the question for judgment and decision is whether capital punishment is justifiable under actual circumstances. Punishment is always in need of justification, since it involves the deliberate infliction of harm on another. This has normally taken the form of indicating some benefit which is to be obtained through punishment or a harm which is to be warded off.
The deterrence of potential criminals from future acts of violence by the risk of death is advanced as an objective justification of punishment. While it is certain that death penalty prevents a person from committing further crimes, it is far from certain that it actually prevents other persons from committing crimes. Less then 2% of police chiefs surveyed see death penalty as an effective tool to help reduce crime (Jackson, 1984). This proving those who support death penalty wrong, that say that death penalty actually deters potential murderers. There is no evidence that could justify the imposition of capital punishment on a few people as a mean of prevention that could discourage other people from committing crimes. There exist strong reasons to doubt that many crimes of violence are undertaken in a spirit of reasonable calculation which could be influenced by a distant threat of death. The small number of death sentences compared to the number of murders also makes it seem highly improbable that the threat will be done and so undercuts the effectiveness of the deterrent.
The protection of the society from crime and violence, to which the deterrent effect of capital punishment is supposed to contribute, is a value of a capital importance. It is important to underline that the maintenance of order in times of civil disturbance does not depend upon the institution of capital punishment, the imposition of which rightly requires a long time and complex process in a legal system. Moreover, both in its nature as legal penalty and in its practical consequences, capital punishment is different from the taking of life in defense of the society or in legitimate defense.
One of the justifying purposes for punishment is retribution or the restoration of the order of justice which has been violated by the action of the criminals. The need for retribution does indeed justify capital punishment. For the practice of punishment both presupposes a previous violation of the law and involves the involuntary lack of certain goods. But this need does not require nor does it justify killing the criminal, even in cases of murder. It is morally disproportioning and socially ruinous for criminals to go without punishing, but the forms and limits of punishment must be determined by moral objectives which go beyond the mere inflicting of injury on the guilty. It would look as barbarous and inhumane for a criminal who had tortured a victim to be tortured also. Such a punishment might satisfy certain revengeful desires that other persons or the victim might feel, but the satisfaction of such desires is not and cannot be an objective of a humane approach to punishment. Punishment must be determined with a view to the protection of the society and to the reformation of the criminal and his/her reintegration into the society.
The imposition of capital punishment involves the possibility of mistake. In this respect, it is not different from other legal processes; and it must be granted a legal system shows considerable care for the rights of defendants in capital cases. The fact is that two out of every six inmates being executed is innocent (Kuttner, 2005). Undoubtedly many other cases of mistaken conviction and execution occurred and remain undocumented (Anderson, 1988). Because death terminated the possibilities of conversion and growth and support that people can share with each other, they regard a mistaken infliction of death penalty with a special horror.
There is a great belief that many convicted criminals are sentenced to death in an unfair and discriminatory manner. Those without money to hire private attorneys and those not the favorite of police, prosecutors, judges and governors are seen as the victims of discriminatory application of the death penalty (Alexander, 1992). This belief can be affirmed with certain qualifications. There is a certain presumption that if specific evidence of bias or discrimination in sentencing can be provided for particular cases, then higher courts will not uphold sentences of death in these cases. But we must also suppose with a legal system which, while it provides advice for poor defendants, permits those who are well off to obtain the resources and the talent to present their case in as convincing a light as possible.
The legal system is evolving. Technology is an instrumental part of this process. In recent years DNA evidence was used to exonerate many victim of the legal system. Fortunately for many of those individuals, they made it out of the penitentiary system before they were executed. It does not matter the how heavy the burden of proof, life should neither be created nor destroy at the hand of premeditating men. How can a legal process carried out by man ever claim to be absolute on the facts of a case. The dilemma here is that in reality, regardless of overpowering evidence, people sometimes make mistakes. There are so called “criminals” whom right now are innocent and unjustly imprisoned. Fortunately, they can be released later when the legal process catches up to the real facts and evidence. There is no recovering from an erroneous death execution. At that point, who will have the ground and credibility to stand and excuse such an irreprehensible action? In order to support capital punishment, one must have such moral ground that to erroneously execute an innocent man would be understandable. Supporters of capital punishment argue that without capital punishment, there will appear a lack justice which in turn would support people take matters into their own hands. However, what capital punishment actually accomplishes is allow men within the court system to “take justice” into their own hands, doing exactly what the private citizen would have done, to take another person’s life.
In the debate over death penalty there is a tendency to ignore its expensive character. Death penalty is very expensive. A single execution costs more than two million dollars and it is $800,000 more than incarcerating a person for life (Hunter, 2002). It seems to be almost hypocritical of the society to keep spending so much money on death penalty which fails to attain its objective. The cost of death penalty cannot be measured only in term of money. Capital cases take up tremendous amounts of court time, therefore delaying the processing of other important cases. If all these money are used to kill a convicted criminal, why does the government use this money to create social programs where they could make young children and adults in situation that could make them become criminals, aware of the problem of violent and serious crime in order to prevent future perpetration of crime.
The imposition of capital punishment involves the possibility of mistake. In this respect, it is not different from other legal processes; and it must be granted a legal system shows considerable care for the rights of defendants in capital cases. The fact is that two out of every six inmates being executed is innocent (Kuttner 20). Undoubtedly many other cases of mistaken conviction and execution occurred and remain undocumented (Anderson, 47). Because death terminated the possibilities of conversion and growth and support that people can share with each other, they regard a mistaken infliction of capital punishment with a special horror.
There is a great belief that many convicted criminals are sentenced to death in an unfair and discriminatory manner. Those without money to hire private attorneys and those not the favorite of police, prosecutors, judges and governors are seen as the victims of discriminatory application of the death penalty (Alexander, 1992). This belief can be affirmed with certain qualifications. There is a certain presumption that if specific evidence of bias or discrimination in sentencing can be provided for particular cases, then higher courts will not uphold sentences of death in these cases. But we must also suppose with a legal system which, while it provides advice for poor defendants, permits those who are well off to obtain the resources and the talent to present their case in as convincing a light as possible. The end result of all this is a situation in which those condemned to die are nearly always poor and are disproportionately black
(Black, 1974). The abolition of death penalty will not eliminate racism and its effects, an evil which people are called on to combat in many different ways. But it is a logical judgment that racist attitudes and the social consequences of racism have some influence in determining who is condemned to die.
The abolition of capital punishment would promote values that are important to the society. It will send a message that the cycle of violence can be broken, that a life is not needed to take for life and that more humane and more hopeful and effective responses to the development of violent and serious crime can be envisaged. It will be a manifestation of freedom of those that struggle for a just society. It is important to find ways of dealing with criminals that manifest intelligence and compassion rather than power and vengeance. The abolition of capital punishment will also a manifestation of the belief in the unique worth and dignity of each person from the moment of conception. It is particularly important that this belief be affirmed with regard to those who have failed or whose lives have been distorted by suffering or hatred; even in the case of those who by their actions have failed to respect the dignity, life, and rights of others.
Capital punishment ignores rather than reinforces the theory of “law” and “Justice”. Justice is a fair trial with a jury of your peers. It is not being put to death at the expense of one’s action. It is an intended consequences far removed from legality and matters of Justice. Capital punishment is not an objective standard. It directly subjects an individual to the mercy anyone he/she has gravely offended. There is not a legal justification for capital punishment. Those who deemed it “necessary” are the ones enforcing it. It is however a clear violation of civil liberties and human rights. I fundamentally reject such a law. The end does not justify the means. It is tempting, especially at the sight of heinous crimes, to side with taking another life to make up for the loss of a lost one. Protection and safety is tenable without the death penalty. The courts’ only responsibly should be to ensure a fair trial and reinforcing that such criminals whom are deemed unfit to live in society are kept in jail. Death as a final consequence is much too risky, immoral, and of no legal basis. The risk of killing an innocent man is enough to make that point. There is no possible legal burden of proof for death. Since law and the interpretation of law are based on precedence, I see society setting a precedent for legal murders. Capital punishment is an arbitrary standard without any way of reaching its burden of proof, absolute certainty. Fundamentally, laws are guidelines, but what guideline does capital punishment set.

Works cited

Alexander, Williams Jr. Christian ethics and capital punishment: A reflection. Journal of Religious Thought, Summer92/Fall92, Vol. 49 Issue 1, p59, 19p; (AN 9604292088)
Anderson, David. Crimes of Justice. Brooklyn: Times Books, 1988
Charles Black, Jr., Capital Punishment (New York: Norton, 1974), pp. 84-91.
Hunter, Edward, The Death Penalty Does Not Deter Crime. The Death Penalty. Ed. Mary E.
Jackson, Bruce. Law and Order. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984
Williams. California: Greenhaven Press, Inc, 2002. 119-126
Kuttner, Benjamin. A Legal Quest Against the Death Penalty. New York Times, 1/2/2005, Vol. 154 Issue 53082, p19-20, 999p, 1c; (AN 15641973)
Webster dictionary. Capital Punishment. 2007. 01 November 2007.