capital punishment pros and cons
In simple terms, "capital punishment is the lawful taking of a person's life after conviction for a crime" (Flander, 3). In an historical aspect, capital punishment traces as far back as the earliest times of Western Civilization. The first criminal laws were the practice of personal justice. Stephen Flanders writes in his book Capital Punishment: "the infliction of death for purpose of retribution has been a facet of human existence since earliest times. Even before the emergence of organized societies, individuals killed to avenge wrongs done to them and their families. There was no code that specified wrongful conduct, or penalties such behavior would incur" (4). The earliest recorded sets of laws were known to Western society as the Babylonian Hammurabi code. It decreed the death penalty for crimes as minor as the fraudulent sale of beer. Egyptians were also killed for disclosing sacred burial places and for the theft of valuable heirlooms (Flander, 5). "Historica!lly, one of the reasons societies had relied so heavily on the death penalty was that other punishment options did not exist" (Flander, 6). As more organized social structures developed, crimes were divided into public and private offenses. Public offe
Flanders, Stephen A. Capital Punishment. New York: Facts on File, 1991. The people who oppose of capital punishment would also debate about the taxpayer's money. They would include the issue as an expensive, useless task. "In California, our most populous state, it is estimated that taxpayers could save $90 million annually by abolishing the death penalty. Between 1977 and 1996, California spent more than one billion on its death penalty but managed to execute only five men" (Costanzo, 61). However, the cost of maintaining a maximum-security prisoner is approximately $20,000 per year. Raymond Paternoster has estimated that the total cost of LWOP ranges from $750,000 to $1.1 million per prisoner" (Costanzo, 60). These costs could be cut substantially if prisoners serving life sentences worked while in prison (Costanzo, 60). The taxpayer would have to pay more for capital punishment that punishes fewer people for more money. Winters, Paul A., ed. The Death Penalty: Opposing view points. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1997. Endres, Michael E. The Morality Of Capital Punishment: Equal Justice Under the Law? Connecticut: Twenty-Third Publications, 1985. A group of American Christians have argued that capital punishment is immoral. That if life is indeed sacred, then it is sacred everywhere for convicted murderers, citizens of hostile governments, and cruel dictators (Tivnan, 158). "Adam Smith, he notes that 'we feel cheated' if a criminal should drop dead before he can be executed." He believes it is the anger that brings people to punish others (Tivnan, 170). Edward Tivnan who wrote the book, The Moral Imagination, says "the death penalty, is trapped inside a discredited metaphor about justice, the ancient retributive notion of 'eye for an eye', the law of the same kind of punishment (170). The government takes this view if the crime provokes the community's anger, which turns into hatred, the belief that the punishment should be a large, perhaps the maximum punishment-death (Tivnan, 170). Morality can be debated in many ways. The opposing view is on whether a person's life is valuable and not to be destroyed. The people in favor of capital punishment do not believe the taxpayer's money is spent unwisely. They believe that the money goes to the protection of the people in society. Also, fewer crimes will occur due to a criminal's
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Approximate Word count = 1600
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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