Sunday, May 2, 2010

THE Capital Punishment

First I would like to thank the people that have already done their journal. Without them I would not be able to go onto the blog to see what in the world I have to write about. BUT, because they did in fact do their journal early like the good little students they are I know now that the topic of discussion is capital punishment.
Capital punishment is a very controversial topic( naturally because everything we blog about falls into this category) that is discussed a good deal. It is not the most discussed topic but since Georgia houses one of the few facilities in the country where prisoners are taken to be executed so it is a little more discussed.
The death penalty implemented by the government, to its citizens is an idea that can be traced back to the Bible. In fact most of the rules in modern day government can be somewhat traced back to the Bible. The difference is though, is that the Bible condones many different reasons for the death, while our law mainly reserves such a penalty to murder. The idea of the death penalty is that the convicted is so evil and such a threat to society that they are a risk even to be left alive. I believe that there can be such a case where this would apply.
Ok so yes I am for the death penalty in the certain situation that I have stated above; now to address all of the "well what about when..." statements that follow the death penalty. First of all: "Well what about how it is very painful when being eliminated?". Personally, I don't understand how this argument make sense. Let me give you a situation. A man decides he is going to date some women and then when he is going to bring them home. Back at his home he will then proceed to rape and/or kill them. Now, let's imagine that this man is arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to the death penalty. Now, please raise your hand if you are worried about the amount of pain this man receives as he is being exterminated from society. Exterminated: just like a pest.
"What about how it cost more to kill a felon than to keep him in prison?". If you think that what you are doing is really true, then allowing monetary concerns affect your decision making process is an insult to your own character. Do we stop enforcing the border with Mexico because we will never catch them all and it costs us a lot of money? Or do we not send a helicopter to someone because it will be costly for them travel all the way out in the woods? Money invested in keeping our country safe is money better spent than many other ways our taxes are used.
Finally I would like to talk about the "What if the person is innocent?". For the last two responses I had a rather simple time developing a stance. This is a harder question, especially because of The Innocent Project expositing so many people who have been convicted who are actually innocent. The only answer I have, and I do not believe that this would be good enough for anyone who has been falsely accused, is that when you become a citizen of a country you lose some of your rights, but you gain the protection of the government. There are risks involved in being a citizen and you can say this one of them. Also, we can not dwell on the bitter past, but rather it is more prudent to move forward. I'm sure that today with many DNA testing the odds are very low of being falsely convicted and as time goes along, the odds will go down. And there you have it: Capital Punishment.

No comments:

Post a Comment