Capital Punishment
I am against capital punishment, and the answer as to why is really quite simple: It is not our life to take. We do not live under the “an eye for an eye” law anymore. Capital punishment is not only wrong because it places the executioner in a morally wrong position of murderer, but also because it takes a life that was not ours to take. Just because someone terminates a life does not make terminating another right. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Some argue that the alternative to capital punishment—placing these offenders in jail—is a waste of the taxpayers money. Well, heaven forbid the government waste our hearty tax dollars! I won’t even touch on the billions of dollars spent on weapons alone for the war in Iraq, or the alarming number of innocent lives taken in the process. There are few who can honestly say that the Government is talented in the wise spending and budgeting of our money.
With something as permenant and destructive as captial punishment, we must be absolutely certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that the person accused is indeed guilty of that which he or she is accused of. This is where everything falls short. Those responsible for executing judgment—the judge and jurrors—can never know exactly what occured when the murder(s) took place, or why. They were not directly involved in the murder, and ironically enough, there is always one interested party missing from the judgement process—the murdered. As a result, there is always a small risk that they have arrested, trialed, jailed and murdered the wrong person.
Almost every single time the capital punishment debate is brought up, someone always brings up the “How would you feel if someone you loved dearly was murdered? Would you still be content simply leaving them in a jail cell?” argument. What they don’t realize, however, is that their argument is faulted in and of itself. True judgement in the law should never be based upon simply feeling. Feelings are illusions, not facts or truths, and quite frankly it would be appalling to hang any human life—guilty or not—on any kind of illusion.
Agreed.
A life sentence in solitary confinement with no chance for parole is a better option. The occasional torture is also in order for those that deserve it.
Reply: Hahaha. Not sure about the torture part, but I definitely agree with a life sentence as a better option.
June 16th, 2007 at 8:32 pmI will have to disagree with you on that one chanel. We as a society have the obligation to protect society and provide a deterrant for those who may commit a crime in the future. For someone who murders or rapes in cold blood, for someone who commits high treason or someone who does something so awful, why should we give them more rights than they gave their victims?
Unfortunately we live in an ugly world. There is still war and there is alot of evil. Sometimes it takes a necessary evil to prevent more evil. We as humans are not perfect and we arent trying to be perfect when dealing with issues of justice. Our main concern should be the protection of society. A criminal will act differently if he knows he might face a death penalty for killing. In canada they get a max 25 yrs with parole after 8 yrs. Thats an outrage!
July 27th, 2007 at 4:43 amIf someone killed my loved one, I would not want them to live. God wasnt here to protect my loved one, so why should God all of a sudden protect the criminal from justice? Even though we beleive in God, we have to understand that God will not prevent any crimes. We as a people have to try to prevent horrible crimes. Sometimes that means that we have to make moral compromises. As ugly as that sounds, that is the reality of this world that we live in.