Death Penalty: Blessing Or A Curse?

Death Penalty: Blessing or a Curse?

Imagine it’s getting dark and your child still hasn’t returned from school. Everybody in the house is worried sick. All of you start calling for help and looking around the area only to find out that your thirteen year old daughter has been viciously raped and brutally murdered in an alley by her own maths teacher. How would you feel? Would you be okay with him going to a prison with a roof on his head, letting him eat three square meals a day and getting the opportunity to occasionally meet his family? Is that really how much her life is worth? Your innocent little girl who had a whole life of possibilities ahead of her inhumanly killed just because her teacher was crazy. He viciously took her innocent
It is a very effective method to deter crime because every time it is used, the criminal dies making sure that he or she never commits the same crime again. Moreover as commonly known, people fear nothing more than death and so when a criminal knows that his own life is at stake he will think twice before committing the crime. Furthermore death penalty creates a fear in the minds of the people. On the other hand life imprisonment isn’t something people are really scared of. What is stopping the criminal from murdering someone from inside the prison? The thing is if a criminal knows that he or she can get off easily, nothing is going to stop them from committing another crime again. Capital punishment makes sure this does not happen. Mocan & Gittings (2003) found out that for each execution, an average of five murders were deterred whereas a removal from death row resulted in an average of five additional murders (as cited in Muhlhausen, 2007). Former American president George W. Bush said the following, "I’m going to uphold the law of the land and let the political consequences be what they may. If it costs me politically, it costs me politically... No case is an easy case... I also keep in mind the victims, and the reason I support the death penalty is because it saves lives. That’s why I support it, and the people of my state support it too." (Personal communication,
They believe that it is racist whereby more black people are penalized and especially if the victims are white. And some further believe that it only punishes the poor as rich people can use their money and power to get out of the situation. The Ten Infamous Cases of Wrongful Execution article from the Criminals Justice Degree Guide website writes about how ten innocent people in the U.S died after they were served with the death penalty (http://www.criminaljusticedegreesguide.com/features/10-infamous-cases-of-wrongful-execution.html). As a result the critics feel that capital punishment should be abolished because it is a flawed system. I understand that they think capital punishment is unfair and unbalanced. It actually maybe so in some places as proved above. Nevertheless if we look at this carefully, their argument is invalid because what they are saying is an argument to improve the justice system. It cannot be used against the death penalty. If it were, then it would be an argument against all the punishments. Are the critics saying that if it was applied fairly then they would actually be okay with it? Or should there be no punishments in our society at all? Hence my opponent’s points are insufficient because when say we support capital punishment, we are basically saying that hard core criminals and murderers should be