Time to Abolish the Death penalty essays

Time to Abolish the Death penalty essays It was Ghandi who said, n eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth makes the whole world blind and toothless." His words speak to the core philosophy behind the movement to end capital punishment: it is a backwards policy that seeks to redress a wrongful deed by perpetuating the very act itself. His words still ring true today. In fact, an open-eyed analysis of the death penalty reveals that it is immoral and irrational. When we set out to effect retribution, we must be careful not to set a double-standard. We do not punish arsenists by setting their homes on fire. We do not punish rapists by raping them. Yet some people are so opposed to murder that they will kill anyone who commits it. The death penalty is not only unethical in theory, but ineffective in actual practice. For years, advocates of this policy have argued that it is a deterrent. But according to Steve Moyer, esquire, the number of criminals who commit pre-meditated murder is quite small. Most murders take place in the heat of the moment. Furthermore, the perpetrators are often under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Therefore, they are unable to weigh the consequences of their actions. Even if opponents of the death penalty conceded that the death penalty was a deterrent in some cases, their argument wouldn't collapse. For there remains the problem that human arbitrators, whether alone or in groups, sometimes make mistakes.If the cost of such an error is the imprisonment of an innocent man, one could argue that our judicial system still works overall; the reason is that the innocent person could always be freed later on. But when the cost of human error is the death of even one innocent person, legal ethics cannot justify this irredemable loss. Thus, we must wherehouse the guilty in order to protect the innocent. In America, the need to expunge cruel and unusual punishments is imperative. The death penalty is one sush punishment ...