The Death Penalty Should be Abolished

Capitol punishment is simply a reasonable punishment that a criminal deserves for a horrible crime. It puts a permanent end to persons who may have otherwise come out only to kill again. There have been cases of murderers who were released only to kill again. http://www.dailymail.co.uk... Statistics show that most criminals released from jail are repeat offenders. http://www.crimeinamerica.net... Pro argues that capitol punishment is revenge because it gives back an equal or great level of pain to the killer. First of all, this isn't true. If a murder stabs someone 32 times, does the state stab him 32 times in return? If he burns someone to death does the government light him on fire? In fact, the guillotine, long-drop hanging and lethal injection or vastly less painful than the creative ways sadistic serial killers find to torment their victims in their last moments, and these do not last long at all. So if revenge must be equal to or greater than the previous pain inflicted, then capitol punishment couldn't be revenge. Secondly, "Retribution should be distinguished from vengeance. Unlike revenge, retribution is directed only at wrongs, has inherent limits, is not personal, involves no pleasure at the suffering of others, and employs procedural standards.[1][2] In ethics and law, the aphorism "Let the punishment fit the crime" is a principle that means that the severity of penalty for a misdeed or wrongdoing should be reasonable and proportionate to the severity of the infraction.[3]" https://en.wikipedia.org... Retribution is not limited to penalties that produce equal or more physical pain as Pro assumes, therefore, even putting someone in prison or imposing a fine can be rightly called retribution. "Revenge, a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance." https://en.wikipedia.org... So, isn't prison and fines also a harmful action against a person in response to their crime? Seems to me that even Pro's alternatives to the death penalty can be classified as revenge, so his point here is mute! Just think of all the times people you know have gotten revenge. It wasn't always exactly and eye for an eye, was it? Pro also claims that the rape of women in prison can't be used to show life in prison is worse than death because its an issue that can be solved, and yet, he uses the fact that the death penalty is painful to prove that its revenge, even though this too can be solved. We can have painless deaths. Deaths that only last a second or two. Long drop hanging and the guillotine are very quick and almost painless. We can use drugs that numb the person to the pain. So yes, it can be solved, but we can't ignore the current state of affairs. Life in prison is a horrible life, a life of humiliation, where you have to bathe in a bathroom full of people, your privacy is gone, your name is taken away and replaced with a number, even the food tastes like crap, and the comforts of life are taken away. Being locked up in a room with hardened criminals isn't exactly the safest place to be either. Many would rather be dead and out of misery than to face this. Pro further claims that "The act of revenge is identical or excessive in response to the original action; life in prison is clearly not on the same level as capital punishment." So, if a bully at school kicked a school boy onto the floor, kicks him all about his body, spits on him, urinates on him, calls him names, tears up his books, and rips his school clothes, then the boy stumbles up, and give him one hard slap in the face, are you saying that slap cannot be revenge just because it didn't equal what the bully did to him? What if a husband cheats on his wife ten times but she only cheats once, is it not retribution just because he did worse? So if ISIS successfully detonates a nuclear bomb on US soil and wipes out a whole city, killing millions, and American soldiers hit one of their bases and kill just a few, is this not revenge just because its on a smaller scale? The idea that revenge has to be on the same level is clearly false. You burn my house down so I slash your tires. That's revenge, but its not on the same level. It still is revenge cause it has all the classic feelings and motives, lack of procedure, etc, but to suggest that it must be the same level of pain to be revenge is just silly. Why is the punishment for shoplifting different from the punishment for illegal possession of drugs? Isn't it because the courts try to find punishments proportionate to the crimes committed? Its not even EVERY murder that DESERVES capitol punishment, but SOME do! Question on this eye for an eye thing: what exactly is wrong with wanting a murderer who is has killed many, and intends to kill more, to be gone from the earth? Please tell me what is wrong with not wanting to keep a threat to society alive in this case? Please tell me why he doesn't deserve to die! Now Pro says that a fitting punishment is not always a retributive one, and cites a mentally unstable person engaging in bestiality. But this is a bad example because such a person should not be punished at all. The psychiatric hospital is not used as a punishment for this person, but a means of helping them to hopefully return to their sound mind. This person is clearly sick, and certainly no court should give someone life in prison or a death sentence for committing a crime while not in their right mind. Mental illness is a sickness just like the cold is a sickness. We don't get punished for being sick. Punishment, period, is ALWAYS retribution for a crime, either by demanding a person pay a heavy fine, or spend time in prison, or death. In my country, ZR drivers are fined heavily when they violate traffic regulations, and too many violations can result in having their license revoked. Pro argues, the death penalty is expense, so abolish it. The guillotine isn't expensive, neither is long drop hanging, and surely we can gas them to death while they sleep. So the same way Pro claimed the problem of women being raped in prison can be fixed, the price of the death penalty can also be fixed. Executions do not have to cost that much. We could hang them and re-use the rope. No cost! Or we could use firing squads and ask for volunteer firing squad members who would provide their own guns and ammunition. Again, no cost. There are many imaginative ways the cost of killing someone can come down. Criminals themselves don't seem to spend too many millions to get their victims killed, do they? Pro finally argues "My argument is that it is pointless to have capital punishment when studies show that it adds no deterrence effect to the punishment of life in prison." And life in prison adds no deterrence effect to the punishment of capitol punishment. For that matter, imposing a fine adds no deterrence effect to a few months in prison, and vice versa. So this argument is senseless. No punishment, it seems, is the major factor in reducing crime in a country. Keeping a cold-blooded killer alive, even in prison, poses a danger to prison guards and other inmates. Capitol punishment removes that danger, while preventing him from killing again. I also object to Pro's claims of retribution in the sense, that most murders are not executed by capitol punishment, and to use the handful that have been given the death penalty to insinuate that there is a consistent program of retribution on the government's part would be wrong. I have also argued that life imprisonment without possibility of parole causes much more suffering to the offender than a painless death after a short period of imprisonment.