Unlike popular belief, the death penalty does not act as a deterrent to criminals. As stated by Alfred Blumstein, "Expert after expert and study after study has shown the lack of correlation between the treat of the death penalty and the occurrence of violent crimes." (Blumstein 68) Isaac Ehrlich's study on the limiting effects of capital punishment in America reveals this to the public. The study spans twenty-five years, from 1957 till 1982, and shows that in the first year the study was conducted, there were 8060 murders and 6 executions. However, in the last year of the study there were 22,520 murders committed and only 1 execution performed. (Blumstein 54) This clearly shows that many violent criminals are not afraid of the capital punishment.

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. Th

How can murder not be immoral? Citizens under a social contract agree not to kill only because others also agree. In an attempt to try and stop the public from taking the law into their own hands, the judicial system must convince society that it is not in their best interest to murder. So how can the constitution be brought into this argument, since it makes no mention of capital punishment? These are a few of the questions that we must ask ourselves when we try to form and develop our own opinion on the subject of the death penalty.

Even though the retentions pose some interesting arguments, I myself feel that the abolitionist outlook contains much stronger support and more reasons for opposition. The first of which is the death penalty is wrong morally because it is the cruel and inhumane taking of a life. The methods by which most executions are carried out can involve physical torture. Haag states "Electrocution has on occasion caused extensive burns and needed more than one application of electric current to kill the condemned."(Haag 137) To many opponents, capital punishment is a euphemism for legally killing people. And no one, not even the State, has the authority to play God.

draws from. John Lock went s far as to say, "...that murder is not intrinsically wrong.

of having to watch it and it does not deter violent criminals from lashing out against society.

death/case_against. The Case Against the Death Penalty

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 !

Painful Question. New York, NY, 1975. Basic Books, Inc.

In case of a mistake, the executed prisoner can not be given another chance and justice will have miscarried. In the last hundred years, there have been more than seventy- five documented cases wrongly conviction of criminal homicide. A death sentence was carried out on eight of these seventy- five individuals. Surely there are many other cases of mistaken convictions, and execution occurred and remained undocumented. A prisoner discovered to be blameless can be freed, but

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