Now in these times people are more “moral”, therefore, some countries and societies have abolished the death penalty. They have done this because it is against human rights, and in most of the cases, the religion prohibits taking away the life of a person (the 6th of the Commandments says “You shall not murder”). As many people oppose this issue, many are on favour of it. “For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists”. This was said by Albert Camus a person who is against death penalty. And an example of a person in favour of the death penalty is George Bush, president of the United States, who in a presidential debate he said: “I don’t think you should support the death penalty to seek revenge. I don’t think that’s right. I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people’s lives”. Many persons have been affected by the Death Penalty, one clear example is Derek Bentley and his family. I’m going to tell his story. Derek Bentley was a man who suffered from epilepsy. Once he was participating in a robbery, with a friend, got caught by the police. They were carrying a gun, so the police officer told them to hand it in, so Derek Bentley told his friend: “Let him have it”, and then BUM! The officer was killed. After this incident Bentley, who was an adult person was sentenced to death by the judge. Some years after his death he was found innocent and the authorities realized that the entire incident was a misunderstood, and he was “forgave”. But this didn’t brought him to life…
The death penalty is said to deter other murderers and therefore prevent future murders. This is not totally true because even though there are people who are executed daily, there are still a lot more people who are killed by others. There is really no point on pretending that the death penalty will “scare” others from committing fatal crimes because murderers are most likely to ignore that and continue killing others who deserve to live.
The last paragraph leads on to the fact that the government uses laws as a deterrent too. A common question asked is: are people simply punishing or are they protecting society? People are not “simply” punishing, but are punishing in an unfair way. Protecting society? In some way or another they are and we as citizens, in some way benefit from such as a punishment as it is capital punishment, but not totally. This is because some major criminals are killed and we get rid of these people who have caused a great damage to their victims’ families. However, there are other killers which are still out there without being caught which make us feel less safe and more worried.
In conclusion, capital punishment is not right because nobody has the right to take away anybody else’s life. In addition, using it as a “deterrent” really has no effect at all because people will continue killing others no matter if others have been killed for committing that same type of crime. Besides, think about it, to punish a capital crime, killing is used, ironic isn’t it?