Capital Punishment: Cruel Or Inhumane?

Imagine for one moment that a close family member, a brother, a sister or even a best friend were murdered. You have feelings of sadness, grief, extreme anger and frustration. You want the person responsible to face justice. Is ‘justice’ a 20 odd year jail sentence and then freedom? To what? Go and commit yet another murder? No, you want them to suffer as they have made their victim suffer. Capital Punishment or ‘The Death Penalty,’ in many people’s opinions, is a cruel and inhumane form of punishment that hasn’t been used in Australia for 48 years. (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2006). Ladies and Gentlemen, Capital Punishment is not cruel. Capital Punishment is not inhumane. Capital Punishment is justice. Justice which must be legalised

In the United States of America, the four legal forms of Capital Punishment are, death by lethal injection, hanging, the firing squad and electrocution.

Hanging causes all messages from the spinal cord to the brain and heart to stop. Lethal Injection, performed by a Medical Officer, involves the injection of chemicals to anaesthetise and cause the brain and heart to stop immediately. Neither of these methods involve pain or suffering. The way in which these heartless criminals are put to death is much more humane that the way in which they have murdered their victims. For instance, being lethally injected in less painful then being tortured, strangled or

(Wikimedia Foundation Inc, 2015). He killed in the worst ways possible, torture and rape. Imagine what those poor victims went through. Having to go through the unimaginable pain of prolonged suffering to only eventually arrive at death. Imagine if that was someone close to you. To the family of Jill Meagher, it became a reality. She was sexually assaulted and murdered by a man by the name of Adrian Bayley. Imagine what she went through. However this situation was made even worse by the fact that this horrible man was on parole at the time and has sexually assaulted before, and not just once or twice, but 9 times before this. As well as attacking a man and two other women. Yet he was released again and again, which eventually allowed the death of Jill Meagher to occur. Hanging or even electrocution is a much kinder death compared to what was inflicted upon Jill Meagher and so many other victims and nevertheless it is still considered cruel and inhumane. Capital Punishment is not torture. It is not cruel. It is justice. Justice which must be legalised again in