Capital punishment is at times a necessary course of action

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

Esther Tan

Capital punishment is at times a necessary course of action

She was not asleep, as her roommates had thought when they approached the bed of Joni Lenz that afternoon. Instead they found her drenched in a pool of blood that was still oozing from her body. She was immediately rushed to the hospital as she lay in a coma. Although she survived she was permanently brain damaged. Joni was one of the few victims to survive an attack by Ted Bundy, a serial rapist and murderer who had victimised women as young as twelve. Investigations revealed that he assaulted thirty-six women, but nobody will ever know the exact number that fell victim to Bundy. It is a number he carried to his grave.

Capital punishment is defined as the imposition of death upon a person convicted in a court of law. It is a legal infliction and it has been used to punish a wide variety of offences but nowadays, restricted to murder or treason. Today, methods such as stoning and beheading are considered barbaric. At present, criminals are electrocuted, executed by firing squad and lethal injection or sent to gas chambers, so death would be virtually painless. It is instantaneous.

A capital criminal should be dealt with in a manner that would make it impossible for him to repeat his offence. Execution is the only definite means of preventing a murderer from being on the loose and committing further murders. If a criminal is imprisoned, not only are prison staff exposed to violent murderers, people in the entire community may be at risk too, if these criminals do escape. Such was the case of Ted Bundy. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1976 after he was charged for the murder and rape of Caryn Campbell. During his time in prison, he tactfully devised a means of an escape. He succeeded. He got himself an apartment, a new identity and into more crimes. Denise Naslund was last seen walking towards a restroom in a park after spending the afternoon with some friends. That afternoon, a man who wore an orthopaedic cast on his arm asked her for help with his boat. Denise Naslund was the kind of girl ever ready to help someone in need, especially someone with a broken arm, not realising it was an act of kindness that would cost her her life. Because Ted was not executed, many other women were, sodomised, raped and murdered. Even if prisoners do not manage to escape, there would be a possibility that they may be granted parole. If they happen to return to society, who's to say they wouldn't kill again?

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Capital punishment may seem merciless. But as murder itself is barbaric, death is the most appropriate punishment for it. A murderer deserves to die. This is justice. A life for a life. The punishment received by a criminal should be just as severe as the crime committed. If someone has murdered another person, the suitable punishment for the murderer would be death. Ted Bundy’s vile act resulted in Joni Lenz’s shattered being. With permanent brain damage and paralysis, Joni Lenz can only lie on her hospital bed. In the case of Caryn Campbell, Ted Bundy left her two children motherless and her husband a widower. Nothing can ever replace the life of a person, not to mention the many more lives that Bundy had sadistically slaughtered. Since Bundy had caused the trauma in these women and their families, only he should pay the penalty. It is not fair to the victim’s family that the murderer of one of their kin should go on living. Executing the murderer would satisfy their needs for justice or vengeance because as far as the victim’s family is concerned, the murderer brought the punishment upon himself.

Statistics in the USA shows that of the 2,575 prisoners sentenced to death in 1992, 1 out of 11 had a prior conviction of homicide. This means that additional people had to die before these murderers were sentenced to death. What kind of justice is that? If the murderers were sentenced to death the first time they were convicted, other innocent lives would not have perished. Thus, the punishment befits the crime and the victim’s family and the general public would be comforted knowing one less murderer is on the prowl.

It also makes economic sense for a convicted prisoner to be executed. A criminal kept in prison would cause authorities to bear extra financial costs to maintain the criminal for no useful purpose. All these expenses have to be borne by taxpayers. These taxpayers may be the victims, family members of victims or potential victims of this prisoner. Why should they pay for the expenses of a person that has caused or may cause misery in their lives? It takes only a small fraction of the amount used to keep a criminal in prison to execute the criminal. By executing a criminal, the unjustifiable expense is avoided and the funds could be allocated to more productive use.

Opponents of capital punishment would argue that there is no co-relationship between death penalty and crime rate and, therefore, would not deter criminals. Deterrence is the act or process of discouraging and preventing an action from occurring. Taking a criminal’s life is the ultimate punishment so it must be a better deterrent. The possibility of execution should cause a murderer to be hesitant in his quest for a despicable act, using fear as an incentive for preventing recurrence or the first occurrence of murder.

However, capital punishment only deters people who are easily frightened. The fearless will not be deterred; the irrational will not be deterred, the serial hard-core killers know no boundary. When looking at the justice that capital punishment brings about, deterrence is not the question. Cold-hearted murderers are insensitive to the value of human life so they are not deterred and also do not think about the consequences of their actions. Just because they have no moral values doesn’t mean their acts may be endured and exempted. Actual statistics about the deterrent value of capital punishment cannot be measured because it is impossible to know how many have been deterred from committing a crime.

Arguments forwarded against death penalty include the fact that an offender is not given a chance to turn over a new leaf and return to society as a law-abiding member of the community. However, rehabilitation does not always work. Besides, many criminals are insane and terrorists. It would be useless trying to rehabilitate insane people for they do not have rational thoughts and because terrorists are deeply committed to their cause, arduous attempts to rehabilitate them have resulted in failure.

Proponents against capital punishment also throw the argument that execution is cruel revenge and a tragic loss of human life. But in the tragedy of human death, there are many degrees of consideration. Is it not much more tragic for an innocent person to lose his life than for the law to take the life of a convicted capital offender? Even though capital punishment serves as some sort of compensation to the victim or his/her family, it cannot be classified as ‘cruel revenge’ because, as mentioned earlier, its purpose is to protect humanity. If capital punishment is ‘cruel revenge’ then it is unjust. But is it not unjust to let a cold-blooded killer escape the penalty of crime? A society that permits injustice would face the dire outcome of its tolerance eventually.

However, capital punishment is not necessary for all crimes. It would be foolish to execute a thief or a person who has vandalised public property because these crimes are not severe enough for the criminal to warrant death penalty. This reinforces the earlier point of imposing a punishment that is fit for the crime. Not every prisoner deserves the death penalty. A person who is charged for manslaughter should not be treated as one who kills just for the sake of killing. He should be given a second chance, as the killing was not premeditated. There would be a high possibility that this person would be able to be rehabilitated and returned to society a reformed person.

Although modern society considers death as punishment inhumane, there are circumstances where all other methods such as rehabilitation are futile. In these cases, capital punishment is the embodiment for justice. After having considered this issue from different aspects, capital punishment is, at times, a necessary course of action.