What good comes out of capital punishment? Does it bring back your loved ones who were cruelly murdered? Does it teach the murder a lesson? No, it only ends up in two lives being lost instead of one. It is an act of revenge. So according to the law two wrongs do make a right and you can fight fire with fire! All it gives back is perhaps guilt and regret. In the wise words of M.K. Ganghi, “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”
We all have different life styles, different stories, different friends but one thing we all do is make mistakes. Our mistakes can be looked upon as a bad thing but in reality they help us to learn and improve. The only difference is the size of the mistake we make. How can anyone improve and learn with capital punishment. Murdering a human being is a big mistake but we all can learn from our mistakes. Capital punishment doesn’t allow this. It tells us to never make a mistake. You show me the man who never made a mistake and I shall show you the man who never improved.
Some of us are lucky and have been guided carefully in the right directions and manage to avoid being drawn in by the wrong crowds and haven’t had to make tough decisions that could change our life. Some aren’t so lucky, some have been lured by others, some have not been guided in the right directions and some have had to make very hard decisions that later they may regret. We may find that many of us would have made the same decisions if put in this persons shoe’s. So why can’t this person finally be shown the paths to take and ways to live rather than being put to death?
Who’s getting the better deal? Although some victims have suffered many have been unwarily killed instantly, perhaps by a bullet to the head. A quick and painless death. The murderer on the other hand doesn’t seem to get the same deal. He must put up with what seems a life time of waiting, in a small cell with the only company of his haunting regrets and guilt until finally the day comes when his life is ended.
If this doesn’t convince you the methods will.
· The method of hanging is an effective cheap method and very commonly used. It involves tying a slip knot around the victims head and dropping him through a trap door. The force of his own wait is enough to break his neck and result in death if lucky. If the rope is not measured correctly other things may go wrong. Too long and the victims head shall be ripped right off. Too short and the victims neck shall not be broken and instead he shall be slowly strangled to death resulting in their tongue hanging out and even their eyes popping out of their head sometimes. The survival time for this method can be from 8 – 10 minutes of agonising pain.
· The electric chair introduced in the USA in 1888, because they thought it was more humane than hanging, used previously. At short intervals powerful electrical discharges are applied for 2 minutes and 8 seconds changing from 500 to 2000 volts! It can sometimes result in the prisoner jumping forward, urinating, defecating or vomiting blood and internal organs being burnt to go with the smell of burnt flesh. If the sponge placed on the victims head is not wet enough the victim can sometimes manage to survive the entire 2 minutes and 8 seconds of excruciating pain meaning further discharges are needed. The survival time for this method is up to 10 minutes. Two reports just show us how horrific this methods is:
Willie Francis, a black 17-year-old boy, condemned in 1946, survived to the first attempt to kill him. An eye witness said: "I saw the executioner switching on and the sentencee’s lips swelling, his body tense and strained. I heard the electrician telling to his colleague to send in more juice [electricity] when I saw Willie Francis still alive, and the colleague said he couldn't send more electricity. Then Willie cried: 'Stop it, let me breathe!'. Then he said he had felt his head and his left leg burning, he had jumped against the strings and he had seen blue, pink and grey dots".
He was executed one year later, successfully.
John Louis Evans: executed on April 1983, he was stated officially dead - as the eye witnesses said - only after three discharges, each of them of 1900 volts, for an overall duration of more than fourteen minutes.
· Finally the method of the lethal injection was introduced in Oklahoma and Texas in 1977 and the first execution was in Texas on December 1982. This involves a chemical called barbiturate being injected to make the victim unconscious so he doesn’t feel any pain followed by two paralysing agents to stop the movement of heart and lungs. The measurements must be precise or the result may be the victim being conscious and feeling the agonising pain of the poison. Here is a report showing the cruelty of this method:
James Autry, was executed on 14th March 1984. His first execution date planned was on November 1983: Autry had already been tied to the stretcher and he was undergoing the first part of the procedure - a saline solution was being introduced in his veins - when the execution was suspended.
After the "second" execution, an eye witness said that the sentenced took at least ten minutes to die and most of the time he was conscious, he could move and he moaned because of the pain. A prison doctor present at the execution said later that the needle had clogged up, slowing down execution times.
Many more methods are used as capital punishment such as the gas chamber, firing squads, the guillotine and so on and all of them have draw backs and mistakes that can result in the victim suffering severe pain for longer than necessary.
Finally look to religion. Would God, the father of all of us vote for capital punishment, the murdering of one of his children? Capital punishment is murder and is unchristian and inhumane.
In conclusion it is my belief that capital punishment is cruel, unforgiving, vengeful and isn’t the final solution for preventing crime and is simply an act of revenge. It causes exacerbates the grief and distress to those involved and can later cause a burden of long term guilt. Remember that a falsely convicted man can be released from prison but not from the grave!
