Should people decide whether someone must live or die? Capital punishment is the practice of executing someone as punishment for a specific crime after a proper legal trial. In this essay the reasons why capital punishment should be made legal or not will be analysed.
Nowadays capital punishment is legal in many countries, however, it is only applied when severe crimes, such as rape or murder occur. One reason these countries put forward to justify death penalty is that by ending the criminal’s life they prevent other killings and rapes, as criminals may be afraid to be condemned to death for such a crime. Society use punishment to discourage criminals from unlawful action, for this it should use the strongest punishment available to deter punishment, and that is the death penalty. This method is known as deterrent effect. It also provides a closure for victims or related ones. Their grief might not be over with the murderer's’ execution, but it gives them a feeling of relief. Also, many people condemned to death take the opportunity to express remorse the time that have been before the execution.
On the other hand, people against capital punishment argue that death penalty does not teach the condemned never to do what he/she has already done. If this person is sent to prison he/she has the possibility to rehabilitate. As well as that does not dissuade criminals, it does not change their minds about killing people. Killing someone because he/she killed someone is an hypocritical act. It makes no sense to denounce the practice of murder by committing the same act. Is not the aim of punishment to teach us about things we should not do? Then the justice system should refuse to criminalise murder with killing. Misjudgement leads to miscarriages of justice, so wrongful convictions can occur at any trial. Inadequate legal representation, shoddy police investigations, eyewitness misidentification, racial prejudice, and falsified evidence are factors that contribute to wrongful convictions around the world. In the case of the death penalty, victims of wrongful convictions pay the ultimate price.
As to conclude, I believe capital punishment should not be legal as we have no right to decide if people should live or die, especially as there are many other methods of punishment which do not include murder.
In fact, I agree with almost everything that says the third paragraph to be a person who is in favor of the death penalty, more than anything with the hypocrisy that the government implemented on teaching not to kill when killing a person. However I strongly think that guilt when "hanging" a person is the fault of the system and only of the system. Also very good essay
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