Advantages and Disadvantages of Death Penalty Essay Example

crimes (Banner045). In this essay, the pros and cons of the death penalty are discussed extensively.

Advantages of the Death Penalty

The first advantage of the death penalty is that, criminals who have for instance attempted murder, whenever they have been issued the death penalty, the mourning families or the affected people tend to feel and receive the media circus for their grief and also, they receive compensation for the loss of their lovely ones. Moreover, with a death penalty, the affected families will be rest assured that the criminal who initially inflicted pain and loss unto their families will never kill again. Therefore, capital punishment with a stance of death penalty should be frequently delivered to the unstoppable law breakers. However, sometimes, death penalties are reduced to life sentence whereby the criminal is condemned to die in death row than by execution. Therefore, death penalties should be availed to the criminals since this act tends to issue criminals who have showed to the world their abilities and capabilities to offer brutality to the innocent citizens, a harsh correction aiming at preventing them from repeating their injustice crimes. Therefore, the death penalty punishment is the most effective way to reduce criminality and offer justice (Mooney234).

Another advantage of death penalty is that, beyond justice, death penalty provides a benefit towards the entire community. It may be easy to view killing someone under possibility pretense as immoral. The purpose of Court Trials is to convict based on what has already happened not on what will happen. However the death sentence of a convicted murderer can result in zero future killings from him/her. Safety of the community is the basis

of what the government should provide. According to Mooney (239) depicts a man named James Eely killing a Burger King employee after released from his conviction in slaying a pregnant woman and three children. Therefore, being that this was a wrongful arrest for the first case this explains that future murders from the same person are definitely possible. Death penalty provides a decent opportunity for the criminal to be released under the pretense that he/she is no longer a criminal living in the society. Public Opinion and the Death Penalty by Schabas (098) includes a statement, “If we kill murderers then, we have alleviated the stress and desire for the future murderers to emulate their oppressors”. The Death Penalty Statistics also show how capital crime results in small but evident decline. Society has only improved with the help of the death penalty. It is shown how the numbers of executions correlates to the decrease in murders, meaning both have declined. Keeping the death penalty legal will eventually lead to even fewer executions toward the future.
Death penalty is one of the methods of bringing about justice. 34 out of 50 individuals in America agree that death penalty is a methodological aspect of alleviating criminality in the society. One of the primary reasons why the death penalty has been in existence throughout history is the need for justice. Many believe that the death penalty is actually unjust and a risk of murder towards someone that is actually innocent. An eye for an eye is the general picture that justice implements. It should make no difference in terms of murder. While it may provide zero effect to the

deceased victims, their friends and families happen hold on to the need for justice. According to the Death Penalty Statistics from the U.S., there has been zero executed inmates that have been proven innocent. Therefore, in order to avoid such inconveniences, carrying death sentences under concrete cases is the best solution. Weak cases against convicts given the death sentence has provided release of these inmates (Banner976).

Another advantage as to why death penalties are important and advantageous is that, giving criminals just a life sentences as compared to the death penalty, tends to gives them a second chance to life. It gives them the opportunity to parole whereas death row does not. If they parole or escape, they will be out on the streets committing more crimes. With death penalties, they do not have a chance of this. Therefore, with people committing more crimes that are heinous our government and judicial system is becoming more like a joke to people. Jails are becoming more like a place of luxuries that people no longer fear. The majority of people serving time are serving half of the time that they should for the crime. For example, a mother who drowns five of her kids should receive the death penalty no question. Now they claim that they were mentally unstable sentencing her to a mental hospital giving her another opportunity at life. Now her children’s lives have been cut short (Schabas457).

From another religious perspective, death penalties are the best ways for dealing with criminals. The bible says that an eye for an eye is the best procedure (retribution). Retribution is the basis in religious values, which have historically maintained

that it is proper to take an eye for an eye and a life for a life. For retribution, a criminal is made to suffer in proportion to the offense. Many families of murder victims a reason for witnessing the execution of the person who murdered their loved one. Therefore, death penalty is the best and simplified method and also a simple solution that will help in such a complex problems and with the advance of DNA, testing it makes it difficult on prosecuting innocent people (Banner990).

Human life is consecrated and sacred and for this reason, I find death penalty acceptable, and anyone killing deserves to die too. Therefore, the justification given in favor not to allow death penalty to be issued is wrong and therefore, someone who denies another the right to live should be let off the hook. Not all murderers should be left alive, and so they should have a taste of their own cruelty. The refusal by some states to adopt capital punishment has undoubtedly led to a rise in the number of murders. Moreover, most people have extrapolated this concern to the extent of moving to states that do not support this punishment. Therefore, in the process, they have evaded judicial system and denied justice to the victims. Besides, it is highly probable that such persons will continue to kill at will. Everyone should advocate for death penalty to be enforced in all states so that people committing heinous crimes should not get away unpunished. Moreover, Death penalty should be meted out to persons who have been convicted legally for atrocious crimes they have committed. This way, it acts as

a deterrence to existing and would-be offenders and consequently reduces by a large proportion the number of murders in our society. If the state fails to execute such offenders, many lives are put in danger, particularly when the offender turns out to be a serial killer. If the judicial system in every state approves the death penalty, homicide rates will drop by a large margin (Mooney226).

Another advantage is that, most murderers typically occur in reaction to intense feelings of passion by individuals who are under the influence of active and strong substances and who act impulsively. Therefore, they do not act rationally and do not think of the costs of their actions. This reasoning is unsustainable and going with such reasoning; every murderer claims to have not been in the right frame of mind during the murder crimes. Determining the genuineness of such claims may be an uphill if not impossible task, and it is known that murderers have used such arguments to escape the law. If the death penalty is adopted, every potential murderer will become conscious of the repercussions of their actions and this could deter a person from engaging in murder or other serious offenses (Mooney226).

Disadvantages of the Death Penalty

The first disadvantages of the death penalty is that, some criminal cases are much more expensive than the cost of the normal criminal cases to be issued with the death penalty. Moreover, these death penalties tend to cost more than the cost of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. According to Hood (234), a study that was done in Kansas stated that, the capital trial costs at $ 120,000 more than an

ordinary murder trial. Moreover, when handling this kind of punishment, there are numerous and diverse complex pre-trial motions, which tend to be much expensive while lengthy jury selections are much more expensive while expenses for expert witnesses tend to make the whole aspect costly and therefore, these small costs tend to add costs in death penalty cases. Moreover, the irreversibility of the death penalty cases and trials requires the judicial courts to formulate the tribunal chambers to aggregate the process in the preparation and course of the trial. Moreover, the distinctive aspects of the separate sentencing phase of the trial tends to take a wider period of time even longer as compared to the innocence phase of the trial. Moreover, defendants tend to insist constantly on a trial because they know there is no possibility for them to evade the death sentence. Finally, after the victims have been convicted, the constitutional appeal tends to involve defense costs (Mooney223).

Another disadvantage is that, death penalty has been inflicted and can be imposed upon innocent people. Moreover, upon the infliction of this innocent people, the cost of an execution is generally high. Therefore, some of the main reasons as to why society is against the death penalty is they feel that keeping criminals locked up for life is because they feel that it is cheaper than executing them. However, in the end it ends up costing taxpayers a staggering $1.2 million to $3.6 million more than the death penalty per case.
Death penalties tends to discriminates against other gender, races and ethnic groups. According to Mooney (225), in the United States, in January 1977, 45 of the total 98

prisoners who were executed were blacks and Hispanics. As much as the African-American people only make around a tenth of the American population, a bigger number of those who detained in the federal death row are 50% of the African American population. Therefore, criminals should not be given an inhuman punishment or a lighter punishment due to either their race, gender or ethnic groups (Hood289).

Christianity considers Death penalty as a case of disrespecting the perfect creation of the almighty and an act of taking the role of the almighty God to take away lives deliberately without his conscious. For instance, during other forms of execution, the criminal is tied and trained technicians insert a catheter into a vein then drill a stream of sodium thiopental followed with a saline flush then the body is cut into pieces then presented to the public. This is a barbaric form of punishment which renders the question asking why the law tends to ignore the omnipresence of the almighty and His power to take away lives.

Another disadvantage is that, death penalties do not deter the occurrence of crimes because it exposes the weaknesses of the government by not having strong laws and regulations. With imposing, the death penalty to murders plays a significant role on the general society. It shows all the criminals out on the streets and community that we as a government has rules and laws society must obeyed. People have started to take the government as a joke and continue to commit crimes because they know the government is too easy on most crimes. That people who commit these heinous acts will be punished, because taking

another human being’s life is so precious. They do not deserve to live and execution is the only way to keep these animals from committing these crimes again. As well as keeping everyone safe as well as the guards in the prison to society. These criminals do not deserve to socialize and enjoy three meals a day they serve in prison. Therefore, over time the government and judicial system has become a complete joke to many people and not taken very seriously (Mooney226). The headlines are always filled with crimes and murders, which do not come as a shock to society anymore. The jails are more like a social gathering with some of the luxuries they have at home. However, with the judicial system getting more lenient over time that people are committing crimes with a far too light of a sentence. They try to say that the defendant had psychological matters and need help. So they are issued to seek mental help after they have killed their babies in a bathtub. It seems over time people lose respect for the government and the laws they set that it seems like that only way to deal with these types of people is to kill them (Hood398).

Conclusion

To give my opinion on the whole issue before doing any research, I would say the Death Penalty is Justifiable depending on the situation. Unless the Judge saw the crime himself then I can see how it would be hard to make an important decision on what is seen and heard in a courtroom. Also, I did not realize how expensive it is to follow through with putting someone rest

when it is done legally by the state. This is one of the many aspects that goes into Capital punishment in which I did not know about. In my eyes this issue does not look like it will be laid to rest anytime soon. It is one of those topics that will never make both sides happy. Therefore, In general, the death penalty should remain legal as it brings in more benefits than disadvantages. These include, but not limited, to better serving justice and eliminating some of the dangers to society. Financially it is also cheaper in most cases to execute the inmate rather than hold him/her for life-sentence without parole. Morality does play its part in the debate of the death penalty. However, morality isn't included in order to provide legal and statistical reasons why the capital punishment should still be allowed.

Reference

1. Banner, Stuart, and Stuart Banner. The death penalty: An American history. Harvard University Press, 2009.
2. Hood, Roger, and Carolyn Hoyle. The death penalty: A worldwide perspective. OUP Oxford, 2014.
3. Mooney, Christopher Z., and Mei?Hsien Lee. "The influence of values on consensus and contentious morality policy: US death penalty reform, 1956–82." Journal of Politics 62.1 (2000): 223-239.
4. Schabas, William. The abolition of the death penalty in international law. Cambridge University Press, 2002.