Abolitionists believe the offenders should be required to compensate the victim's family with the offender's own income from employment or community service. There is no doubt that someone can do more alive than dead. By working, the criminal inadvert-ently "pays back" society and also their victim and/or victim's family. There is no reason for the criminal to receive any compensation for the work they do, because money is of no jail time. This could be considered a form of sl

One of the most well-known examples of the criminal contributing to the betterment of society is the case Leopld and Loeb. They were nineteen years old when they committed "The Crime of the Century." In 1924, they kidnapped and murdered a fourteen-year-old boy just to see how it would feel to kill someone. They were both spared the death penalty and sentenced to life imprisonment. (Bedau 78) Together their accomplishments included working in hospitals, teaching the illiterate how to read, creating a correspondence school, writing a grammar book, and making significant developments in the World War II Malaria Project.(Bedau 193) "An inestimable amount of people were directly helped by Leopold and Loeb, Both of tem made a conscious commitment to atone their crimes by serving others."(Bedau 217)

Man, as he is bound to preserve himself and not quite his station willfully, by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind." (Bedau 277)

Officials often defend this punishment as not being cruel and unusual, but how can they defend the opinion in the case of John Evans who was executed by electrocution in 1983? According to witnesses at the scene of the death of Mr. Evans, he was given three charges of electricity over a period of fourteen minutes. After the first and second charges, Mr. Evans was still conscious and smoke was coming from all over his body, as a result from his flesh burning. An official at the prison even tries to stop the execution on account of it being cruel punishment, but the man was unsuccessful. Witnesses later called the whole incident "a barbaric ritual". (Haag 221)

An argument against the death penalty is the basic moral issue of conservation of human rights and humanity. The argument of retribution would be even easier to dismiss if it consisted only of a basic thirst for revenge. As stated by Bedau "Society must manifest a terrible anger in the face of a terrible crime, for nothing less will suffice to remind us of the moral order by which alone we can live as human beings." (Bedau 121) This is a serious moral argument. Opponents of capital punishment must be willing to answer it on its own terms. They say that "... the death penalty demeans the moral order and execution is not legalized murder, nor is imprisonment legalized kidnapping, but it is the coldest, most premeditated form of homicide. It does something almost worse than lowering the state to the moral level of the criminal: it raises the criminal to the moral equality with social order." (Haag 280) Indeed, one of the ironies of capital punishment is that it focuses attention and sympathy on the criminal.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Bedau Society, Isaac Ehrlich's, Donald Harding, Associated Press, John Evans, Stanford University, Leopold Loeb, Supreme Court, John Lock, United Constitution, death penalty, capital punishment, cruel unusual, supreme court, opponents capital punishment, moral argument, gas chamber, opponents capital, method execution, penalty abolished, death penalty abolished, abolished barbaric,
Approximate Word count = 1979
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)