According to Thomas Paul and Linda Elder of the Foundation for Critical Thinking, “most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with social conventions, religious beliefs, and the law”, and do not treat ethics as a stand-alone concept. Paul and Elder defined ethics as a set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what behaviour helps or harms sentient creatures.
Capital punishment or death penalty is a legal process whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime. The judicial decree that someone punished in this manner is a death sentence, while the actual process of killing the person is an execution. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin Capitalis, literally “regarding the head” (referring to execution by beheading).
More so, in the past, it has been practised by most societies, currently 58 nations actively practise it, and 97 countries have abolished it (the remainder have not used it for 10 years or allow it only in exceptional circumstances such as war time). In the European Union member states, Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment.
Currently, Amnesty International considers most countries abolitionist. The United Nation General Assembly has adopted, in 2007, 2008 and 2010, non-binding resolutions calling for a global moratorium on executions, with a view to eventual abolition. Although many nations have abolished capital punishment, over 60% of the world’s population live in countries where executions take place, such as the people’s republic of China, India, the United State of America and Indonesia, the four most populated countries in the world, which continues to apply the death penalty (although in India, Indonesia and many US states, it is rarely employed).
In most places, capital punishment is reserved for murder, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice. In some countries sexual crimes, such as rape, adultery, incest and sodomy, carry the death penalty, as religious crimes such as apostasy in Islamic nations. In many countries that use the death penalty, drug trafficking is also a capital offence. In China, human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are punished by the death penalty. In militaries around the world, courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offences such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination and mutiny. There are various methods of capital punishment: BEHEADING, ELECTRIC CHAIRS, GAS CHAMBERS, HANGING, LETHAL INJECTION, SHOOTING etc.
It is important for any human being, criminal or not, to die with dignity. A murderer may display his or her own immorality by taking another's life, but it would be inhumane for anyone to put them to death in an undignified manner. For example, the lethal injection is the most commonly used method in the United States. It involves the offender being given a last meal, being made to wear a diaper (because when the lethal injection kills the person, their bodily functions fail) and laid down a corridor to the chamber where they are strapped down and injected with either Sodium Pentothal, Pancuronium Bromide, or Potassium Chloride. It is clear that this method does not display humanity in letting the offender die in an undignified way.
Furthermore, it is the same with hanging, gas chamber, and electrocution. If people were to be put to death in Australia, the most respectable option would be death by firing squad. The offender would be taken to a secluded area, blindfolded, and shot, causing instant and painless death. No undignified violation of the living offender or dead body would occur, and the desired solution would be achieved.
Life sentences are not an effective alternative; the offenders may be released, causing them to reoffend, or if they are kept in prison for the rest of their lives, they suffer, cause overcrowding of prisons, cause their families to suffer, and are simply no use to society.
There are controversies and debates wherebyAdvocates of the death penalty argued that it deters crime, and a good tool for police and prosecutors, which makes sure that convicted criminals do not offend again and also used as a just penalty for atrocities crime such as child murder, serial killings or torture murderers. It is immoral to the furthest extent to proclaim that a person who commits an extremely heinous act; such as rape, brutal premeditated murder or torture of humans and animals, still deserves the right to live freely, or even in an incarcerated state, in our country.Contrary to that, further arguments states that not all persons who committed murder deserve a death penalty, execution discriminates against minorities and the poor and it encourages a culture of violence and that it violates human rights. We live in a digital age, where computers and machineries are utilities to help us learn. Thanks to DNA testing, forensic science and computers are able to analyze evidence thoroughly and determine, beyond a shadow of doubt, whether or not a person is guilty of committing a crime. This is not always the case, however, and in such instances it would be a blatant display of bad leadership and moral values for the government to put someone to death. But if they know, with full certainty, that someone is guilty of a heinous crime such as murder, rape, torture or any other very serious crime, they should have full right to remove the offender from society.
Another argument used by opposers of Capital Punishment is that everyone deserves a life; that no-one deserves to be killed. But then, they support Life Imprisonment, simply because the offender is still alive even though there is really no point to their existence. There should be no argument here: some people simply deserve to die, to pay for their actions.
However, when a person commits a heinous offence, when they appear in court they often present 'excuses' for their actions. The most common excuses are mental illness or mental scarring due to abuse as a child or a troubled upbringing; the offender might say that his mother was a drug addict, or that he grew up in an abusive environment, to justify his own acts of violence. But regardless of whether the offender did not know they were doing wrong, or were in a psychotic state due to mental illness, the responsibility for their actions lays on them, and no-one else.
For example, a man was in a car accident as a child which caused damage to his brain and gave him a psychotic anger management problem. He flew into a fit of rage, and bashed his daughter to death. He was not most likely unaware of what he was doing, nor was he able to control it, but he still did it. He was sentenced to life in prison. Regardless of the 'excuse', regardless of the 'justification', that man was responsible for his actions. The argument of deciding whether a criminal should live or die does not come down by putting them to death, nor does it matter whether the offender had an 'excuse'. It comes down to moral values.
Finally, People who commit heinous crimes deserve to die; they surrender their right to live freely in society by displaying inhumanity towards others. Currently, Capital Punishment is an idea, but it is not full of empty words. It definitely could work and could be treated with responsibility; therefore you cannot take what you cannot give.
Innocent Umeh & Blessing Oluoha (2013)
