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Is Capital Punishment Moral?

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Submitted By JGrainsky12
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In a fit of rage a man enters a store and demands that the clerk empty the register. The fear stricken clerk hesitates, so the man shoots him in the chest leaving him to suffer a slow, painful death. Should this man be killed for his crime, or should he be locked up in a cell for the rest of his life?

I do not consider capital punishment an effective disciplinary action for those who have committed crimes. The act of ending the life of a convicted person makes us murderers too. Furthermore, there is always the risk that we could execute someone who would later be proved innocent, which would be a horrific tragedy. The idea that capital punishment reduces the crime rate is false. Also it’s not true that a life sentence for a prisoner will cost the government more over time. Most compelling to me, in creating my conviction, was an interview with an inmate from a Connecticut correctional institution. Her shocking revelation that a most prisoners would rather die than spend the rest of their life behind bars helped me come to the conclusion that we would not want to offer this kind of solitude to our most serious criminal offenders.

Capital punishment is an immoral, hypocritical and inhumane act. The methods though which executions are conducted can involve physical, emotional and mental torture. Who was it anyway who gave humans the authority to play God? When a criminal is convicted and given the death penalty, by carrying it out aren’t we committing an act that is as bad as the one we are punishing them for? If, as a society, we want to punish the taking of a life, shouldn’t we be punished for doing the same thing? Capital punishment, in my opinion, lowers the government to the moral standards of its criminals. For all the supporters of Capital punishment in the room, I have one question: If you take a criminal’s life for taking someone else’s

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