Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment

Capital punishment can be consider for some people as the fair retribution for terrible crimes, while others will consider it as a premeditated murder and the failure of civilization. The controversy on this issue gets stronger every time that horrible crimes are committed. In these cases significant community’s support is shown in favor of death penalty, but when the public concern about such severe crimes decreases, people’s attitudes toward this issue tend change dramatically. And now more that ever death penalty is been severely questioned since people have been executed for crimes that they did not committed. That is why China, the country that executed more people in the last 10 years, is now reviewing the sentences in cases where death penalty is the punishment. Therefore it is reasonable to say that death penalty is a cruel punishment and in any case is morally, socially or economically justified since other forms to deterrence crime can be implemented by governments.

The fiscal pained that is inflicted by the methods that are adopted to execute a criminal could be considered as a form of torture. Even lethal injection that is believed to be the most “humane” method to inflict death can cause extreme pain if the injection is not place properly. Since doctors are not allowed to intervene, there are high possibilities to have mistakes in carrying out the procedures. Furthermore, other execution methods that are now implemented are extremely cruel. For instance electric chair does not produce instantaneous death; in fact generates a lot of sufferings in the inmate, that in some cases has been repeated but many times before the person dies. And in the case of lethal gas the agony that the prisoner suffers is more that obvious if we consider that the cause of death is hypoxia (Death Penalty Information Center, 2002).

The possibility an innocent can be executed carrying out a sentence is a moral issue that supporters of capital punishment could not convincingly contradict. In many cases the low social status and the lack of money of the accused have place an important list in the application of the death penalty, since poor people don’t have access to an adequate representation. Statistics shown that 107 inmates were liberated just before to be executed because new evidence that prove their innocence have been emerged. (Amnesty International, 2003:2). Besides as Judge Kirby points out every system of justice has a grade of fallibility and imperfection; in other words as long as capital punishment will be apply, it will always exist the possibility of condemn innocent to the death row, even with the use of DNA (Milligan, 2003:1)

Supporters of death penalty argue that the implementation of this punishment can help to create a safer society, since it will have a deterrent effect on people that are thinking to commit a crime. Nevertheless scientific studies have demonstrated that the application of this punishment doesn’t reduce the numbers of violent crimes; in fact statistics showed that the rate of violent crimes are constant (Potas and Walker, 1993:1 and 2). In addition the study made in the state of Oklahoma found that after Oklahoma resumed the application of capital punishment an increase in the homicides have been showed. Finally in the cases of homicides that are committed in the heat of passion probably the person will be so disturbed that the last thing that he or she will think about will be the possibility to face a death penalty.

A practical reason of why death penalty should not be implemented is the significant among money that will be spend from investigation to execution in trials where death penalty could be applicable. The study made by Duke University shows that the United States expend $2 million more in the cases of death penalty, and probably the shocking part is to realize that live imprisonment