MOST PEOPLE EITHER ARE for the death penalty for certain crimes or against the death penalty for any crime.
Many countries have eliminated the death penalty. Some keep it on the books but don’t utilize it. A few, such as the U.S., have a mix, depending on the makeup of a state’s population. Israel, which has the death penalty for very specific crimes is considering broadening the crimes deserving of the death penalty. (The Israeli military courts can order an execution, but this never has happened.)
The bottom line question: Does the death penalty deter capital crimes?
WIKIPEDIA1 provides an alphabetized list of countries with and without the death penalty. There are 58 countries that still have executions2.
Amnesty International offers a table listing the “10 countries with the most executions” between 2007 and 20123. China leads the list with “thousands” of executions.” Iran comes in at #2 with more than 1,600 suffering capital punishment. Amnesty fails to provide figures for terrorist groups such as Deash and Al Qaeda that regularly behead-before-cameras anyone who disagrees with their philosophy. That of course does not include the murders of “non-believers” committed by Daesh, Al Quida, and other Islamic groups’ followers,
There is an on-going debate: Is the death penalty a deterrent to capital crimes (murder, rape)? The Internet is replete with articles on both sides.
An Associated Press article in the Washington Post 4 states that “A series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument _ whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer.
The reports have horrified death penalty opponents and several scientists, who vigorously question the data and its implications.
On the other hand, Zachary Rickens, writing on the PennLive site5 contends that “Death inflicted by the government in itself is cruel and unusual, a clear violation of all citizens’ Eighth and 14th Amendment rights. The oft-used justification for capital punishment is that it is justified retaliation for the murder victims. It is supposed to give the victim’s family a sort of closure, but retaliation is just another word for revenge. As Mahatma Grande once said: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
It is worth remembering that the non-violent Gandhi told the Jews of Europe that they should surrender to the nazis and quietly die sans resistance6. Fortunately for Jews alive today, the Jews Gandhi wanted to die quietly disagreed. For Gandhi’s appreciation of Palestine, read “Where Tutu (and Gandhi) got it wrong” (LA Times at http://tinyurl.com/y8cmke2p)
On the “no death penalty” side is AmnestyUSA7 that holds that “The murder rate in non-Death Penalty states has remained consistently lower than the rate in States with the Death Penalty.
“The threat of execution at some future date is unlikely to enter the minds of those acting under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, those who are in the grip of fear or rage, those who are panicking while committing another crime (such as a robbery), or those who suffer from mental illness or mental retardation and do not fully understand the gravity of their crime.”
The ProCon site8 offers opinions on both sides of the issue. It may be the only site that provides sane, side-by-side arguments for and against the practice.
The financial cost of executing a person is a consideration for some over and above any moral convictions.
The Death Penalty Information Center9 claims that “Cases without the death penalty cost $740,000, while cases where the death penalty is sought cost $1.26 million. Maintaining each death row prisoner costs taxpayers $90,000 more per year than a prisoner in general population.” The statement did not specify if these were a nationwide average or state-specific.
Given the number of DNA tests that freed prisoners on death row, and the number of people committing capital crimes who are found mentally deficient, there seems to be ample grounds to carefully consider limiting application of the death penalty to a few specific crimes, terrorism being one.
While many death penalty advocates site the Bible’s “eye for an eye” as justification for executing a person who murders another, they fail to cite another Biblical admonishment. According to the Bible, before a person can be put to death, at least two eye witnesses to the crime must testify AND that the murderer was warned before the crime was committed that (a) murder is wrong and (b) the penalty for a murderer is execution. One witness is one witness too few, and sans a warning immediately prior to the crime, the death penalty cannot be invoked. It is said that the ‘eye-for-eye’ never was carried out; a monetary penalty equivalent to the value of the eye was ordered.
Something to consider.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/nduz9jp
2. 58 countries: http://tinyurl.com/ya3y2qtw
3. Amnesty table: http://tinyurl.com/hz3wk89
4. Washington Post: http://tinyurl.com/ls5mgn
5. PennLive: http://tinyurl.com/yckuzkr8
6. Grande on Jews and nazis:
- “Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves in the sea from cliffs…. It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany…. As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.” http://tinyurl.com/y9vl2qug
If only the Jews of Germany had the good sense to offer their throats willingly to the Nazi butchers’ knives and throw themselves into the sea from cliffs they would arouse world public opinion, Gandhi was convinced, and their moral triumph would be remembered for “ages to come.” If they would only pray for Hitler (as their throats were cut, presumably), they would leave a “rich heritage to mankind.” http://tinyurl.com/k8swqaj
Gandhi wanted the victims of Nazism to remain courageous, and to adopt positive non-violence -the strength not to use force- in dealing with the killers. In 1938, just after Kristallnacht, when the Nazis systematically destroyed Germany’s and Austria’s synagogues, Gandhi wrote these shameful words where he urged Europe’s Jews to joyfully accept the Nazi onslaught. http://tinyurl.com/z62lr76
"If I were a Jew and were born in Germany... I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon.... And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy.... The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant.” http://tinyurl.com/y9zlze8f
7. AmnestyUSA: http://tinyurl.com/yd4wtpze
8. ProCon: http://tinyurl.com/y8gnfep2
9. Death Penalty Info Center: http://tinyurl.com/meztsze
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
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