The Death Penalty

I am for the death penalty for two reasons: One, when a country executes someone for murder you are sending a signal that for the ultimate crime you will get the ultimate punishment--death. After all serial rapists and other felonies can get a life-sentence. A country needs to differentiate between murder and other felonies. Two, dead murders cannot commit murder ever again. They can never be paroled. Murders with a life sentence have a possibility of being paroled. In all fairness to the death penalty opponents I will give some arguments why they oppose the death penalty.

One argument--and probably I think the best argument they have is--a country might execute an innocent person. True, this might happen but executing an innocent person has more to do with the actual criminal trial of the person than the punishment. After all an innocent person could go to jail too. Fault lies in the criminal trial itself. Justice is not so much about finding the truth about the crime than winning and losing. The prosecutor just wants to find the defendant guilty and the defense lawyer wants to find the defendant not guilty. Both parties use whatever legal means possible to win and meanwhile the truth gets lost. If you are going to execute someone the prosecutor has to have a lot of independent credible witnesses and/or incriminating hard physical evidence. You don't want an innocent person to be executed then reform the justice system. Besides a criminal does not get executed right away at least in America. There are always appeals. I would even let the execution delay a month so that the defense attorney or anyone else who thinks the person is innocent can investigate the case further. A month should be plenty of time to investigate. Along the same lines, if you let a murderer out of jail because of a technicality (for instance evidence that is obtained illegally) and he kills someone then an innocent person still gets killed. Either way an innocent person might be killed. In this case because the truth was ignored because evidence was obtained illegally probably not on purpose some else might die. Evidence is still evidence. I am not condoning police breaking the law, but if they obtained it illegally through an oversight of their own then it should still be allowed in a trial. It is the truth that should be the determining factor.

Another argument is the death penalty is state-sanctioned murder. In his book Think A Second Time Dennis Prager has a good reply to that argument. He says if the death penalty is state-sanctioned murder then putting someone in prison is state-sanctioned kidnaping.

A third argument is the death penalty does not deter murder. Well, does putting a criminal in prison deter any crime at all? If that was the case then the crime rate should be zero. I mean if you are to the point of committing a crime you are not thinking about getting caught. You are probably concentrating and planning the crime itself. Also, most criminals think they can outwit the police and not get caught until they get on America's Most Wanted show. The only thing that stops someone from committing murder is a healthy conscience.

Number four reason against the death penalty: Executing someone is revenge by the state. No, it is not. When a person is arrested for a crime (s)he is given a jury trial before being put in prison or executed. Revenge is usually done by someone without a cool head and the victim does not have a chance to defend himself.

Bill O'Reilly has a unique argument against the death penalty. He says that executing someone is too easy. He wants to punish the murderer by having him do hard labor. Okay. I have a compromise to his argument. We can have the convict do hard physical labor up until he is executed. That way it will keep his mind off of his execution and keep him busy.

Executing someone is never a happy event. The victim is still dead. The victim's friends and family will still miss and mourn the victim. The only consolence the victim's significant others has is justice and knowing that no-one else will be hurt.