Capital punishment was the worst punishment that ever faced this country

Authors Avatar

As they say: ‘There are pros and cons of capital punishment, but the list of pros is rather short’.

Capital punishment was the worst punishment that ever faced this country. It is useless, and ineffectual. If it were to be re-introduced, issues of human rights that would effect us all would rise up, and cause difficulties. Furthermore, the human rights of those executed are violated when capital punishment is carried out, and the killing violates God’s will. Imagine that. Why would we want to re-introduce something that is of no benefit whatsoever to us, that also jeopardises our way of life? Furthermore, what gives the government the right to ‘play God’, and allow or prohibit people to live as they please. Life was given to us by God, and life can be taken away from us by God, or other religious equivalents. What gives the government the right to choose who lives and who dies? Even the idea of it is very disturbing to anyone who values human life. Life is sacred. Two wrongs don’t make a right, so what gives us the right to go against God’s will and kill? Killing is something that should never be done. Besides, imprisonment for life is the alternative. There is no chance that the convicts would kill again, for they would be in prison all their lives. So what harm would it do to imprison them, rather than killing them. In addition, how can we say that killing is wrong if we then go and allow the government to kill?!!!

This is why the death penalty is thought of as one of the ‘cruel and unusual punishments’, which are prohibited by the Bill of Rights.  

You may wonder why the death penalty is absolutely useless …….. well, there are so many reasons that I might not have time to go through them all today. But the most important one is this: because, the likelihood is that innocent people will be executed, and the guilty will often go free. It is inevitable, for we are only human. We make mistakes. Even without the death penalty, police, the courts and the system generally cannot be trusted to get everything right on every occasion. But then, it is not as bad. But here, if the death penalty were to be re-introduced in Britain, then their mistakes would result in the loss of innocent lives.

How would you like it if one day, when you came home from school, you learn that a family member, one of your parents, perhaps, was going to be killed, for a crime they didn’t commit? Would you be happy if you were stopped after school today, and you were told that the police think you might have committed a crime, just might, and… you’re gonna be executed for it?

Join now!

The classic case of this is with Derek Bentley. In 1953, on 28th January, Derek Bentley was executed at Wandsworth prison for assisting his 16 year old friend Christopher Craig in murdering a police officer. Derek was only 19 years old. Christopher Craig was not executed because he was too young (only 16). Instead, he went to prison for 10 years. ………Now here is the best bit. On 30th July 1998, just 7 years ago, 45 years after the government killed him, they admitted………………… that they had made a mistake. They realised he was innocent. They granted him a posthumous pardon ...

This is a preview of the whole essay