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Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment

Table of Contents

Capital Punishment ...............................................................................................................4

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................7

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Capital Punishment

Outline

I. Introduction

II. Support

A. The Ripple Effect

B. No sufficient alternative

C. Life sentencing poses dangers

III. Conclusion

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Capital Punishment

Jean Kwon

Michael Leonard

Debate and Argumentation

25 January 2011

Capital Punishment

First degree murders, first degree kidnapping, rape, aircraft hijacking and train

wrecking causing hundreds of deaths, and aggravated suicide. In all these examples, we see

cruel and unforgivable crimes being carried out, the harming and killing of innocent people

that do not deserve them. Justice is needed. For minor and most major crimes, such as theft,

bribery, forging, prostitution, drug dealing, the crime can be vindicated through a payment, a

number of years in prison, etc. What about those crimes that are too horrid, too immoral, too

extreme to be made up for? How can anything make up for a cruel murder of an individual or

a mass number of lives? For example- Athe rape of a young child? A terrorist act that could

possibly destroy an entire city? There is no punishment that matches up to such deeds, except

for capital punishment. Capital punishment, otherwise known as the death penalty, is defined

as “the killing of a person via judicial for retribution or incapacitation”, or “the act of killing

or executing a person who was found guilty of a certain crime.” The root of capital

punishment is to satisfy the only condition that will give justice to the crime punishable in no

other way. Therefore, the United States of America should not abolish capital punishment for

certain crimes.

Many argue against capital punishment with the claim that killing a person is

inhumane and immoral. Contrary to the common belief of society, however, it is justified.

What provides this justification is the something called the ripple effect, or the domino effect.

This effect is brought into play when the fulfillment of one right affects the fulfillment of

another. If one right is satisfied, another right is rejected, and vice versa. This effect applies

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directly to the debate over capital punishment. The right of life of a person is present, but so

is the right to justice of the victim, stated in the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of

Rights. If the death penalty is forbidden to preserve the right of life of the criminal, then at

the same time, the victim’s right for justice is denied. In such scenario, in which the criminal

has committed such brutal crimes against society, the rights of the innocent victim or victims

need to be strongly noticed. And to sustain these rights, the only measure that can be taken to

assure justice is capital punishment for the criminal. The logic for giving a punishment

equivalent to the crime is called “eye for eye” justice. When there are no suitable or

appropriate punishments that match up for the crime, the death penalty is necessary to

maintain justice.

If justice is to be maintained, but the death penalty is denied, what is the alternative?

A lifetime sentence in prison is a final and most severe punishment a criminal can receive,

other than execution. However, society does not show much opposition towards this

punishment. Why is a lifetime sentence to prison acceptable when a death penalty is not?

People answer this by defending the rights of a person to his or her life. One important thing

we have failed to consider is that there is only a minimal difference between a lifelong

sentence and an immediate execution. For someone looking forward to being imprisoned his

or her whole life, the coming of death is only a matter of time. All they have left is a long

time of restrictions, depression, and suffering. We cannot argue that the death penalty

shouldn’t be used when the other option is simply delaying the death. Although nobody

directly kills the criminal, the criminal is forced to suffer and is killed by hunger, age, mental

or physical difficulty, etc. It is illogical that we spend money and effort only to keep waiting

for a death that will come eventually.

Lifelong imprisonment is also pointless because there are no possibilities of beneficial

recovery or rehabilitation. What a prison does for temporary prisoners is that it punishes as

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well as gives a second chance for release. With a lifelong imprisonment, the criminal does

not receive this second chance. Nothing that the criminal does can improve his situation.

There is no reconciliation with society. Even if the prisoner does change for the better, there

is nothing that can be done to release him from his coming death. One good example is the

case of Stanley Tookie Williams. Mr. Williams was convicted of four murders in 1979, and

he was sentenced to capital punishment. He was also a leader of a deadly street gang, called

the Crip, which was responsible for hundreds of murders. Five years after his sentencing,

however, he had a strong religious conversion. After that, he wrote many books and lead

programs for peace and against gangs. His works received many times the Nobel Peace Prize

and Nobel Literature Prize. However, because there was unmistakable evidence that he had

committed the four murders, he was put to death on December 13th of 2005 through a lethal

injection by the state of California. Even though Williams had proved that he became good

later on, there was nothing that could redeem him from his death. This idea supports logic

that a death sentence is a death sentence, whether carried out immediately or delayed, and a

lifelong imprisonment only increases the amount of useless time in between.

Rejecting capital punishment may also cause danger. Criminals who receive the death

penalty are typically violent individuals that would do violent deeds. Their being in prison

may harm the safety of the prison guards and other prisoners. A Brazilian prisoner called

Hosmany Ramos threatened the prison guards with a sharp homemade weapon in trying to

escape. An Ipswich man announced to threaten the prison guard by shooting him as he “knew

where he lived.” There is also chance that these prisoners could escape and again cause harm

to the general public. About 2000 or more prisoners per year have escaped from prisons all

over the United States, showing that the possibility of prison escape is not rare. Capital

punishment ensures that there is no chance of the criminal committing another crime3.

The death penalty is already carried out in many American states, such as Texas,

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Virginia, Oklahoma, California, Florida, etc. Each state has varied laws for certain

conditions, methods, age limits and crimes which qualify. All we need to do is decide if the

capital punishment is acceptable and applicable to certain unforgivable crimes. Think once

more in the victim’s perspective. If your family member, your parents, your siblings, or your

grandparents had been murdered violently. If your own young child has been kidnapped and

forcefully raped. And if the only way to punish the criminal was to sentence him to a few

years of imprisonment? The government would be miserably failing to fulfill the rights of its

citizens.

In many situations like this, extreme measures have to be taken for justice. Rights

clash against one another, but here we decide which are more reasonable. If the life of a

criminal who has done cruel and unforgivable deeds gets in the way of justice and safety, and

if we choose to spare his life using “the right to life” as our only defense, then we are failing

to look at the bigger picture. Therefore, the United States should not abolish capital

punishment for necessary situations.

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