blog task 3

"The death penalty is not a deterrent, it is murder" Do you agree?

According to Wikipedia, capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the execution of a convicted criminal by the state as punishment for crimes known as capital crimes or capital offences. Examples of capital crime includes terrorism, drug trafficking, first degree murder and treason.

Death is the end of life. It is much feared by all. Therefore it is used as a powerful weapon to deter others from committing capital crimes. So the statement is wrong to a large extent in claiming that the death penalty is not a deterrent.

According to dictionary.com, to deter is to try to prevent. I believe that the death penalty is an effective deterrent. This is because we humans make rational decisions. Before we decide our actions, we would process in our mind if the action is a right one and the consequences of the action. Should people know that just by bringing in 15 grams (half an ounce) of heroin, 30 grams of cocaine or 500 grams of cannabis into our country, they would get the death penalty if arrested, chances are they probably would not try to do so.

So what factors would bring us to believe that the death penalty is murder? Well, many people argue that people should not try to be god and should not have the right to decide which human should die because of their wrongdoings. However, I think that this argument is not valid as this seems to be too protective of criminals who have committed capital crimes. We should not forget that these criminals have violated another human being, did not give them any rights in the course of their crime, and therefore their human rights should be taken away as well.

However, the death penalty has always been a controversial issue. As stated in http://www.antideathpenalty.org/reasons.html, “Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 82 inmates have been freed from the death row. That is 1 death row inmate found to be wrongfully convicted for every 7 executed.” With reference to this statistic, we should take into consideration that the juries and police officers are humans after all and they do err in their work. Hence, the death penalty may have loopholes and a person may be wrongly convicted at times. Miscarriage of justice is irreversible and a person’s life will therefore be wrongfully taken away by law. This is one of the stands that the anti death penalty groups have reinstated in their protest against the death penalty. Would not it be better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one?

What I would suggest is that the death penalty should still be accepted. However, the death penalty should only be sentenced if the person is really found guilty of a capital crime. This way, miscarriage of justice would be minimized.