Death Penalty

So Singapore takes away a life, again. The life of young Van Tuong Ngyuen, who died at the end of a rope in Singapore for drug trafficking 25 times the amount of heroin that attracts an automatic death sentence. Someone commits a crime, and then they are killed. Can someone explain the point of this?

This is particularly silly. Because someone commits a crime, that person is punished by being executed. So Singapore believes that if you make a mistake, you must die. The sons and daughters murdered, and lost to drugs cannot be brought back to life, so what is the point of executing the criminal? Surely the criminal should be punished; he or she should be locked up behind bars, but not killed. Everyone has a right to life, and executing someone is unambiguously barbaric.

Singapore should wake up. By 1984 every state of Australia had abolished the death penalty, yet Singapore still believes in it. The Singaporeans must be hair-brained if they can’t realise how barbaric the death penalty is. Australia and many other countries realised this years ago. Singapore must be a very slow country that is living in the past, not the present. It seems as though they will never advance and wake up to the facts, and reach their full maturity (a word usually associated with trouble-making teenagers), and with their inanity, it seems like they’ll be living in the past with outdated laws for a very long time.

What would happen if a criminal admits to killing someone, but they disagree that the killing was murder? They may believe they unintentionally killed the person. In some cases, the only people who know what really happened in such a situation are the accused and the deceased. It then comes down to the skill of the prosecution and defence lawyers to discover whether there will be a conviction for murder, or manslaughter. Simply, a person can be convicted of murdering someone, killing them intentionally, instead of being convicted of manslaughter, killing someone unintentionally.

What’s even worse is that fact that people who are genuinely innocent can be executed and there is no possible way of compensating them. How would you feel, if you were sentenced to death for a crime that you didn’t even commit? Wouldn’t you feel so terrible, that you wouldn’t even be able to express you feelings? What about your family? Such a loss could cause your family serious trauma for many years. You can’t deny the suffering of the victim’s family in a murder case, but you also can’t deny the suffering of criminal’s family.

What if your parents learn a year later that the real criminal has been discovered, and in turn, you had been executed for no particular reason? This facilely points out why ridiculous nations such as Singapore, should abolish the death penalty.

A study in Tennessee established that the cost of the death penalty costed approximately 48% more than the cost of detaining a criminal in prison for life. This money could be better spent on helping the homeless and the sick, rather than spending it on murdering criminals, when instead they can be imprisoned, for lesser the cost. Imprisonment keeps criminals away from committing further offences, so not only is it a more cost-effective way of punishing criminals, it’s also a better way to keep them out of trouble, and keep the society safer.

Killing a criminal eradicates their humanity,