Justice or Vice?

    The death penalty itself is the most sinful crime in the world. It was implicated to deter or threaten people to do crime. Although a prolonged trial must take place to make the final judgment, it still kills people just that justice indorses on the back of the judgment. Through decades, in countries such as U.S.A., Germany and Taiwan, debates over the appropriation of death penalty arise. The current, prevailing idea is death penalty in humanitarianism. Therefore, new instruments and methods are made for the execution. Rather than decapitation, hanging, electrocution, lethal injection is adopted for most more-developed-in-law countries. However, is it a better substitute to terminate a heinous criminal’s life?

    My stance is against the death penalty. I am opposed of the capital punishment due to the following statements. There were many cases of wrongful execution. With the advanced technology to examine exhibit such as DNA, fingerprints, etc., suspects or criminals could be proclaimed innocent and be exonerated. Furthermore, how would the punishment heal the scars of the victims’ family and compensate them for the ordeal they had gone through? Does the punishment do anyone good? How about the methods of capital punishment? To kill criminals with poison after they becomes unconscious is no different to ending ones’ life by tearing them apart or burning them to death. Most importantly, why don’t all the nations abolish the performance of the death penalty?

    Look back to the history, and scrutinize every part of documents about the death penalty. There were many cases of wrongful execution. In the United States of America, there was miscarriage of justice occurring in the 20th century, such time when America led the world with best technology. That is, wrongful judgments might happen any time at the crime scene or on the court, even if we investigated with advanced equipments and rationality for a long period of time. Wrongful executions were always discovered after the prisoner had been executed. For the victim’s family of the lethal mistakes, they could only be consoled with the innocence of their loved ones; the government could do nothing more than releasing official announcements about the mistake, reinvestigating the cases and compensating the family at best. We can not play God even though we were authorized to do such deeds.

    The masses assent that the death penalty demonstrates the enforcement of law, and that it may comfort the broken hearts. Indeed, most of the victim’s family are pacified that the villains had been crucified eventually. The souls of their loved ones could be rested thereafter. However, the victims never become alive or recover to who they were again. The scars could never be cured. For this reason, we should reconsider if the death penalty actually yields more benefits than cost.

    In the history, the capital punishment was often used to eliminate radicals and political opponents. By the power of law, the dictatorship was bestowed to subdue dissent. Such cases occurred in the past and in the present, communist countries and some developed countries as well. Is the death penalty the crime lay behind the veil of justice? It definitely is in cases of political suppressions, and it is sometimes in general penal suits. To some extent, the punishment benefits the government. For dictators, they get rid of their concerns and threaten the remnant and the latent; for victims’ family in general penal cases, they might appreciate the government to impose justice on the crime, so the government builds its reputation thereafter.

    I used to believe that lethal injection stands for a mitigating death penalty. The justice can thus be carried out, and still, the criminals’ dignity reserve. I have once seen the lethal injection in a movie (I can’t find the movie’s name.); nonetheless I can’t believe there were actually audiences during the execution. The prisoner lay in a room with injectors inserted on the arms, and audience, including victim’s family, sat around outside the execution room, watching the execution progress through a glass wall. Does this mean that the audience is cruel, or that the authority wants to demonstrate the consequence of being a criminal? Is this a demonstration of an unruffled, humane execution of a prisoner? Perhaps, the true essence of being humanistic is not just changing the way we execute a criminal but to root out the idea of an eye for an eye.

    I suggest letting the charge stay nominally but not practically. Nominally, we convict the criminals of death penalty for what they have done; practically, we will send them to jail for imprisonment. The verdict of death penalty makes crimes suffer from guilt, but imprisonment helps them recruit themselves and lead them to redemption. In such way, miscarriage of justice would reduce, and no more life would be taken away by mean or by mistakes.

    On another point of view, how much is the cost of the death penalty? Not only the cost for the instruments but the implicit social cost might be much higher than we think. The argument can extend to various aspects. How much does a life cost? Or does the crime rate incline to drop due to the implication of the death penalty? Theses are knots which we still have to untie, and perhaps we can never resolve them. However, why don’t we just start with reinforcing education and the social consciousness of why shouldn’t we do harm to others?