Capital Punishment Vs Society

1. Capital Punishment and its role in society is an ongoing debate about the morality of when it is justified to execute a human being. Traditionally, societies have allowed the death penalty as punishment for heinous crimes.. As reported by R. E. Gahringer, in “Punishment and Responsibility,” the three traditional points of punishing a criminal are to “attempt to deter or prevent future wrongdoing, reform a person who has done wrong, and inflicting a just return on the wrongdoer for an offense.” The question is, whether Capital Punishment successfully follows through with these three guidelines regarding punishment and if it is a suitable punishment for abhorrent crimes.

2. The death penalty has historically divided the United States; its

Starting with hangings and firing squads and progressing to the gas chamber and the electric chair, and now lethal injection, the manner of how society executes criminals has drastically changed. As society began to favor a more humane way of execution, past methods became outlawed in most states. The morality of Capital Punishment is a “larger war between two fundamentally different ways of understanding human nature and the world” (Garnett and Nelson). As society continues to change, the morality and interpretation of the Constitution’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments will be continuously

A study from 1988 by Bedau and Radelet, examines Capital Punishment cases from 1900 to 1986, and they were able to find “350 cases in which defendants were erroneously convicted of capital crimes” (Honeyman and Ogloff). Though the study reports 350 cases where people have been wrongly put to death, the proponents may argue and point to all the instances where the death penalty has executed correctly convicted murderers. Another costly aspect of the death penalty used to avoid the possibility of error is the appeals process which “lasts an average of 10 years” (Honeyman and Ogloff). Due to the brittle basis for the proponent’s arguments of deterrence, retribution, and the cost of the death penalty, one might be compelled to agree with the opponents of Capital Punishment. Opponents to Capital Punishment are able to offer a rebuttal to all arguments made by the proponents and argue the intrinsic morality aspect of whether the death penalty is moral. [Whether one agrees with the proponents or the opponents also can decide if one values justice or mercy. Whereas proponents argue the death penalty carries out justice and the opponents believe mercy is more