What Is Capital Punishment Justified?

Capital Punishment, death penalty, execution. There are many names for the punishment by death. Also known as death sentence, the crimes that can infer capital punishment are called capital offences or capital crimes and include terrorism, espionage and first degree murder. Is it moral? Is it just? Is it justified? The opinions on the topic vary considerably, each side with its own merits and demerits. There are some that see the death penalty as justified, as required and other that see it as a inhumane method of punishment and as something that should be abolished. But who can say for sure that either side is in the right, that either side has the correct way of thinking? To begin evaluating both sides, a few things must be done in advance.

The Sharia law says that in the case of murder and manslaughter the victims relatives can either request the perpetrator to be executed or spare their life in exchange for blood money. In a more modern era and with the emergence of nation states along with the creation of a more dedicated police force and a more permanent prison system gave rise to the concept of natural rights. The reasoning was “deterrence rather than retribution”. This reasoning was supported by many, such as Cesare Beccaria on his treatise “On Crimes And Punishments”, Jeremy Bentham. But due to violence occurring on the site of executions, as reported by Beccaria, Charles Dickens and Karl Marx, executions were moved inside prisons and away from the eyes of the public. But the worse was the period of the 20th century. Countless people were killed in the fighting between nation-states, such the Turkish Genocide of the Armenians, Hitler's attempt to eradicate the Jews, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and

Prime example of this is the Purging of Stalin that saw more than one million citizens of the Soviet Union executed with a bullet to the head and the killing of over 800.000 people by order of Mao Zedong after the Communist Party's victory in 1949. Alas the public was not unmoved by the sheer number of people that saw an swift and unjust death and various organizations were formed that had the abolition of the capital punishment as their primary goal in their agendas. Following the change from authoritarianism to democracy, abolition was adopted due to political change. Among the nation-states of the globe, the majority has abolished the death penalty as a form of retribution. But not everyone has. Prime examples of nations that still have the death penalty as a form of judgment are the U.S.A. (some states in the Union), China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Japan and another 30 nations. There are also some nations that, even though it is not outlawed, it has not been used for over 10 years.

Capital Punishment has been the topic for a heated debate around the globe by governments and N.G.O.s that present valid arguments on both