Mr. Alex: This is not a topic which can easily yield tangible evidence.
Dr. Osborne: I beg to differ. If we saw, for example, without doing anything else, a drop in crime rates, this would mean the death sentence is working.
Mr. Alex: But this could also mean other things. Maybe the drop just happens. For example, a person would steal water if he/she was in a drought. If I then instate the death penalty, and it happens to rain the next month, then obviously the crime rates involving theft of water would drop, and it would not be due to the death penalty.
Dr. Osborne: So if there is no evidence, then why have the death penalty at all.
Host: O.K. gentlemen, this leads us in to the morality issue. What do you think of the human morality issue of the death penalty?
Mr. Alex: Capital punishment is a natural human reaction for one thing. And it also is a form of retribution for the families.
Dr. Osborne: Retribution is just another word of revenge, and when revenge comes into play, peoples minds are clouded because it is a primitive human instinct and often leads to misjudged cases.
Mr. Alex: The death penalty is a just retribution because the criminals get to suffer the same fate as their victims.
Dr. Osborne: The death penalty is not always attributed to murder, Mr. Alex.
Mr. Alex: This I know. However, most of these crimes that also qualify for the death penalty, generally lead to murder.
Dr. Osborne: Such as?
Mr. Alex: In some states, hijacking an airplane gets you a death penalty. And this, as we have seen from prior incidents, almost always end up in someone’s death.
Dr. Osborne: But wouldn’t executing, or murdering as I think of it, this hijacker, ignite an even larger reaction from this person’s extremist party?
Mr. Alex: This argument can be used both ways. It can be said that the death penalty might discourage others from following in the hijackers footsteps.
Dr. Osborne: So who gets the final word in? Who decides who is right, and who is wrong?
Host: Excellent! This leads us right into the next point. Who has the authority to judge whether a person should live or die? And how does corruption come into play?
Dr. Osborne: Well generally, the ones who decide are the jurors and the judge. And here I feel we can agree upon that a large problem lies.
Mr. Alex: This is true. The government can never be 100% sure about who they appoint to these things. In fact, we cannot even be sure that the appointers are have pure intentions themselves.
Dr. Osborne: And this is one reason why the death sentence shouldn’t be allowed.
Mr. Alex: The thing is Dr. Osborne, most of the time; it seems that the jurors and judges appear to have good judgment in these matters as seen when reviewing these cases.
Host: O.K. gentlemen, it looks like we are out of time and we are going to have to stop you there. Thank you viewers for tuning in and have a nice day.