When I looked up capital punishment it was defined as

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorCollege, Undergraduate February 2008

download word file, 2 pages 0.0

Downloaded 1135 times

When I looked up capital punishment it was defined as "the penalty of death for the commission of a crime". In colonial America both murder and even nonviolent crimes could be justified with the death penalty. Murder wasn't the only crime punishable by death. "Criminals" responsible for committing a crime against God would be executed. Although we don't execute people for having sins or practicing witchcraft, I believe capital punishment is still necessary to bring justice to criminals who commit murder.

I think that murderers should be killed in the same way that they murdered their victims in. This is probably an extreme view to most people though. Our government mainly uses the method of lethal injection now, which causes the criminal to lose consciousness before he is injected with the killing liquid. Before lethal injection was around the U.S. used the gas chamber, electric chair, firing squad, and hanging.

The death penalty has been improved not just to execute the criminal faster, but also to be as humane and politically correct I think as possible.

Me being a catholic I am faithful to the lord and when I study biblical history I see that god himself uses a form of capital punishment against the enemies of Israel and for the nation of Israel at times. This greatly reinforces my pro capital punishment ideas. When I think of Catholicism and god I think good and moral things so if god used capital punishment as a form of law then I think it morally fine. Not only is it legal by law in the U.S. it is morally rite also to many normal people like me I'm sure.

Anti-capital punishment groups think that the use of capital punishment to try and stop violent crime does not work by proving that crime rates are not affected by the execution of violent criminals. This doesn't matter in my opinion though because crime rates have risen in the past years so that would be inaccurate unless the crime rate was stable. The death penalty is a warning to a lot of criminals I believe, it's just that we hear about the executions but we don't hear about all the criminals who have probably thought not to kill someone because then they would then be killed themselves. There's no evidence of criminals changing their mine about killing someone because of capital punishment but I'm sure it has crossed many criminal minds.

While the side of anti-capital punishment arguments is valid for inhumane and modern reasons and even economical and cost efficiency reasons because the cost of capital punishment can be anywhere from one million to seven million, while life in prison costs the government about five-hundred thousand dollars. The validity of pro-capital punishment arguments has stronger basic points I think such as preserving the lives of many Americans most likely since capital punishment must be a deterrent to murderers and I also believe that using capital punishment as a regular form of justice doesn't let the U.S. to become soft-hearted. Criminals who have murdered other human beings have, in their actions, asked to be killed themselves because death to the murderer is the equal form of justice.

Imagine if you or I had a relative or friend murdered, I'm sure we would want the criminal who did it to receive the death penalty. It is easy to sit back and talk bad about capital punishment when it has never involved someone you know. Capital punishment will continue to be a very controversial subject I'm sure but I think most Americans think it is the most equal form of justice to be used on murderer.