The Death Penalty

Capital punishment is a necessary evil. It is part of retribution so that society has an ordered sense of justice. It is used as a last resort. It is a form of deterrence. It's important to distinguish between the threat of punishment and the actual effectuation of the punishment. No one would receive capital punishment except through a long process of deliberation and a lengthy number of appeals in the justice system. For example, if a person who was convicted of a serious crime, such as first-degree (premeditated and/or with malice) homicide, received a very poor defense from a public defender because he or she could not afford a decent lawyer, she or he could obtain redress and possibly overturn the original conviction due to incompetent counsel. When it is determined that many wrongful convictions have occurred which have placed innocent people on "Death Row," the governor can and should declare a moratorium on the death penalty until all current death row inmates awaiting execution would have further opportunity to review their cases and figure out ways to speed up DNA crime analysis to confirm or disconfirm guilt. The death penalty should never be used except in cases of premeditated, conscious murder and never self-defense leading to accidental homicide. One of the primary reasons for the death penalty is a just society where one person who takes another person's life has serious consequences. Blood for blood, so to speak. In Genesis chapter 9, after Noah has been discharged from the ark, God issues instructions for civil and just societies to be conducted. There are punishments for taking the life of humans and animals: "For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life. Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person's blood be shed; for in his image God made humankind." 1 The taking of another person's life is not to be flippant or a trivial thing; justice whereby the perpetrator receives a similar punishment to the crime committed ensures that life and spilling blood are serious matters. My opponent writes about some interesting reasons for opposing the death penalty including the "risk of killing the innocent." That is not a great reason; many people who sit in a prison cell for years, cut off from their families and the rest of society may have been innocent of the charges that were brought against them. Is it better that they sit, wasting away in a prison cell, or that they die innocent? Either way, it is about a miscarriage of justice which we need to reform. Another similar reason she cites is "racial discrimination." But the same response I just gave applies to this argument as well. Racial discrimination is wrong whether a particular state has enacted the death penalty or not. She argues that human rights would be violated by the death penalty. Again, human rights would also be violated by awful, overcrowded prison conditions which many states have an issue with. I would like to see the evidence that the "mentally ill" are being targeted by the death penalty. Now, if we are talking about mental illness as in ADHD, then I could see a possibility of that. Basically, since the perpetrator has taken away and/or violated the human rights of another person selfishly, they lose their human rights and it is a lesson to society to take human life as a precious thing. In short, there are no really compelling reasons to abolish the death penalty. The death penalty makes a point about justice and morality that actions have consequences.