Samuel Hand’s opinion is that “the punishment of death is unquestionably the most powerful deterrent, the most effective preventative that can be applied. Human nature teaches this fact. An instinct that outruns all reasoning, a dreadful horror that overcomes all other sentiments, works in us all when we contemplate it (Hand).” The death penalty is an essential tool to fight and deter crime. Capital punishment deters crime by causing potential murderers to fear arrest and conviction, and by preventing convicted murderers from killing again.
Retribution is a way of preventing future crimes, and capital punishment is a secure way safeguard against repeat offenders. “Crime indicates a diseased mind in the same manner that sickness and pain do a diseased body,” the Iowa Supreme Court’s chief justice said. “And as in the one case we provide hospitals for the treatment of severe and contagious diseases, so in the other, prisons and asylums should be provided for similar reasons.” There is something in human nature that requires a life for a life. Two years after the state abolished the death penalty, a convict was lynched in Janesville, Wisconsin. A newspaper reporter from Chicago took the incident as proof of the same natural principle “that this cannot be looked upon as the feeding of revenge, but the voice of nature within us (Banner).” Capital punishment has a retributive basis as long as capital crime was seen to be chosen freely.
For certain people that are genetically or environmentally predisposed to commit crimes, the death penalty cannot be seen as a just punishment. Convicted felons may throw out a death sentence based on illness or psychotic behaviors that the criminal cannot control, yet this claim can only be accounted for with intense psychological reviews or having prior doctor’s diagnosis on said mental illness.
In the past, old laws require that retribution for a capital offense would be to “mirror” the crime onto the offender. Had the criminal killed or maimed someone, they too would receive the same fate as their victim. In the absence of an immediate execution on Death Row, inmates often payback the victim’s family as a means of compensation; more often than not there is some sort of monetary reimbursement paid to the family.
Public safety is also a concern of American citizens. People, in general, can often put their minds at ease knowing a murderer is being incarcerated or executed. This act of their conscience often justifies the old saying of “an eye for an eye.” Having vindictive criminals sentenced to death often relive the public of the worries of repeat offenders. Taking into consideration retribution and deterrence, capital punishment is generally the surest way to ensure that a criminal cannot strike again, and in many cases people advocate whether or not the jury convicted an innocent man, thus leaving the criminal on the loose. Except by saying that we should not have the death penalty because we may accidentally execute an innocent man is like saying that we should not have automobiles because some innocent people might be accidentally killed in them. Or we should not have trucking or aircrafts or elevators because we are going to have accidents. There are going to be some mistakes committed. The question is, on balance, which way do we better promote the general welfare of public safety?
R.L. Calder believes that “nothing is more remarkable in the evolution of a community than the growing regard for human life. A community is held to be civilized, or not, in exact proportion to the safety of the common citizen. When the life of an individual is unjustly taken by another individual, the horror of the community for such an act cannot be adequately and proportionally manifested except as the community surmounts sentiment and exacts the life of the killer in payment – after a trial, where all possible human excuses and palliations have been alleged, tested, and found insufficient (Calder).” For people who truly value public safety, there is no substitute. Capital punishment not only forever bars the murderer from killing again, it also prevents parole boards and criminal rights activists from giving the criminal the chance to kill again.
