What is capital punishment? At first I thought it was just punishment dished out by the government like jail time, community service, death penalty, and etcetera. Well, I was wrong. Apparently it only consists of the execution of criminals. Is it morally correct punishment? Is it too harsh? Is it not harsh enough?! These are the questions that need to be answered! Personally, I agree with the death penalty. Giving criminals 4 life sentences without parole is just a waste of cell-space in jail.
People will argue that the death penalty is a horrible. They may say that murdering a criminal is just as wrong as the crime committed itself. This is wrong. If some random person ran into my house and shot my family, I would want them dead. No questions asked. This stranger single-handedly destroyed my life and crumbled the structures of support that I used to grasp onto. How and, better yet, why would someone do that? If they’re psycho enough to do something stupid; they are no use to society and only cause chaos and harm. They shouldn’t be in existence, really. I don’t want to seem harsh, but you cannot tell me that you would just forgive someone who intentionally murdered people you love just for the fun of it. It’s sick and it’s twisted.
I remember having this conversation with the class and it seemed evenly split. Whether it was for political reasons or not, everyone had their different reasons on why they would or would not implement capital punishment. “It’s wrong to take away a human life.” And “What if they were innocent?” all came up. Well, if there was any doubt in the jury or judge that the subject in question could possibly be innocent, they wouldn’t sentence them to death.
Numerically speaking, not a lot of people are actually put to death each year. It isn’t like hundreds, or even half-hundreds of people are being executed annually. In 2008, the United States capitally punished (is that the verb form?) only 37 people. This isn’t much compared to other countries. China, for instance, executed 1,718 people the same year. Yes, they have more people than us. But they killed about forty-six and a half times more people than us.
With that number of executions in china, this is where I would take the stance that capital punishment is fine, but only in moderate amounts. We shouldn’t hang (or electrocute, or lethally inject, or what have you) every criminal who stole a shirt from a clothing store or trespassed on property. It should only be for serious, serious cases.
And lastly, death isn’t the worst thing that could happen to these people. So saying that capital punishment is atrocious and horrendous and disgusting is wrong. We could be torturing these people. That’s far worse than death.
And no, I do not think that having people wait to be put to death is torture. After all, we’re all going to eventually die. It’s a biological, inevitable fate. So technically, we’re all on death row, right?
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I love this. Your introduction identifies with the readers and asks the essential questions that you aim to answer and/or argue. I agree with you when you question the purpose of assigning 4 consecutive life sentences, I still have yet to figure that out myself, apart from the shock value. I honestly think that the death penalty is not that bad. As many of people have stated, there are many things we could do (though they would be immediately found unjust) that are so much worse than a painless death. From that standpoint, Capital Punishment is not as harsh as we thought. Morrissey once said "long hair is an unpardonable offense which should be punishable by death." I think this quote identifies with this entry because it shows that we're making too big of a deal about the death penalty.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with everything Allison states within her entry. The death penalty, or capital punishment, is totally fair. Without the threat of death for truly horrendous crimes, there would be nothing keeping the perpetrators in check. This consequence is the ultimate payment and is undeniably fair for those that deserve it.
ReplyDeleteThose that argue this is inhumane are seriously delusional. People need punishment for such terrible crimes.
Allison establishes a connection through emotional levels and rhetorical questions. This makes the piece easy and fun to read. It's like a conversation, only on a deeper intellectual level. Good job!! :))
ciara and julia!
ReplyDeleteI was unaware that we had to comment on the writing style.
BUT THANKSSSSSSS!