Capital Punishment Internationally (Essay Sample)

Capital Punishment Internationally
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Capital Punishment Internationally
Capital punishment is also known as a death penalty. It is a legal process where a person is sentenced to death by state, as a final punishment for a crime committed. The use of judicial process to kill a person as a corporal punishment is differentiated from execution, since it is actual event of killing a person without any legal decree. The crimes that can result to death sentences are known as capital offences or capital crimes. However, this research study is objected in discussing the way capital punishment is practiced in the current world, and gives the reasons why it should be abolished in the global platform. The study achieves its notions by providing relevant grounds under which the capital punishment affects the societal living and providing reasons that infringes the human rights of the convicted persons.
Many countries around the world practice capital punishments, although it has become the controversial punishments in some countries. The practicing position in each country depends with single cultural region or the specific political ideologies. For example, the charter of fundamental rights of the EU prohibited the practice of capital punishment in the judicial system. Moreover, the Councils of Europe also prohibits its 47 member states to use death penalties to its citizens (Schabas, 2002).
The execution has been practiced by nearly all societies in the world to punish the criminals and political rivals in order to end crime and suppress the political competition. The death penalty is reserved for treason, murder, as an effort to stabilize military justice. In many countries, the crimes at carry the capital punishments include religious crimes or sexual crimes such as sodomy, adultery, rape, and incest. In some countries drug trafficking and death penalties also attract the sentence of capital offences.
Other countries such as China punish serious corruption cases and human trafficking to death penalties in order to make the whole society refrain from committing similar crimes. Several militaries’ court martial around the world impose capital punishments for any offence such as desertion, mutiny, insubordination, and cowardice. The historical facts indicate the practice of capital punishments in many societies were part of judicial system to eliminate the acts of crime that do not conform to the living styles of those particular societies.
The capital punishments took its roots from the ancient history, where the early societies and tribes believed that it was not automatic to execute the original perpetrators of the crime. The establishment of monarchies, ancient republics, and tribal oligarchies made their subjects to be united by a common religion, linguistic, and family ties. Such civilizations ensured the communities have a common form of punishment, which strengthened the societies to conquer their neighbors. This even aroused the emergence of tribal arbitration in a more unified justice system. A good example of formal legislation is Draconian Laws that introduced the death penalties in the legal system of Ancient Greece.
Another example is Tang China, where a convicted criminal in crimes such as corruption are scourged to death using the thick rods. The criminals in Tang China are also sentenced to capital punishments where they are truncated by cutting them into two at the waist (Hogg, 2009). They are cut using a fodder knife and die after they are left to bleed. The Tang dynasty also used slow slicing of the criminals, where thousand cuts were conducted to a convicted criminal. All the executions in Tang was conducted in a public place, hanging the heads of the criminals in poles and spears, where all the people could see in order to act as a warning to the larger population.
The capital punishment was also practiced in the medieval period, as a general form of punishing criminals since there were no existence of prison systems. Fortunately, the emergence of modern states aroused the citizenship ideologies, which increased the association of justice with universality and equality. This is after the formulation of natural rights of a person and emergence of permanent administrative institutions such as standing police agencies. The emergence of such security institutions increased the pressure to refrain sentencing the criminals to death in minor crimes.
In history, the 20th century was the most eras, where capital punishment was largely practiced (Pitkin, 2008). This was because it was the time when nation states were perceived to conquer their political enemies, in order to retain the political, religious, and ethnic superiority. Among the most notable cases around the world, include the Nazi Germany where capital punishments were conducted by hanging, shooting, and decapitation. Moreover, the modern military agencies maintain their discipline by conducting death sentences for anyone committing acts contrary to their agreements. The criminal acts in the military include looting, cowardice desertion, and absence without leave. Others include disobeying orders, and shirking under fire of the enemies. All these notions attract the death penalty in many military organizations in order to ensure their plans are bond, without any leaking information to the enemies.
The death penalty has been also practiced in several authoritarian nations such as communist and fascist governments, as a potent tool to oppress the political rivals. Various countries have been using judicial system to execute their political rivals in order to retain the authoritative power, especially if one marshals enough support to oust the ruling leaders. For example, in 1937-1938, more than a million Soviet citizens were perceived to have been executed during the Great Terror (Conquest, 1990).
The increase of capital punishments in political aspects attracted several civil rights groups to gain momentum in fighting for human rights concepts and increased emphasis on abolishing the death penalties. This is because such judicial decrees do not necessarily aim to help the society but to benefit the individuals targeting superiority. The reforming societies also find it unnecessary to sentence a person to death on petty crimes that can be punished using different mechanisms.
There are many reasons that can steer to the abolition of capital punishments in the global society, in order to allow the criminals to enjoy their fundamental rights to life. The first reason is the costs that support the execution process. The process of capital punishments is more, as compared to the costs of keeping a criminal in jail for life. Such costs are exerted towards the taxpayers’ burden in order to support the process to the end.
Arguably, the death sentences can be abolished since jailing the person can save the taxpayers money and adding value on it by working on income generating punishments such as cleaning services in governmental environment. For example of huge expenditure is California where the 2011 study revealed that more that $4 billion were spent on capital punishments since the sentence was reinstated in 1978 (Evans, 2012). The study also revealed that capital punishments trials are 20 times more expensive than the trials for life sentence in prison.
Another reason why capital punishments should be abolished is lack of credible evidence that they deter crime. There exists no scientific study demonstrating that executions help people to refrain from committing crimes any more in comparison to prison sentences. Moreover, the states that do not sentence criminals to death penalties have much lower rates of murder cases, as compared to the states practicing the capital punishments.
Capital punishment also leads to conviction and execution of innocent people. In this case, the execution of innocent person is an injustice that cannot be reverted or rectified since the life was lost instantly the death penalty is implemented. According to Schabas (2002), there is exists the emergence of new evidence in the current days claiming the wrongful execution of people for the crimes they did had not committed. Therefore, the death sentence should be abolished in order to end such unacceptable and apparent error that occurs in capital punishment processes. This is because the execution of innocent people cannot end the crime committed but motivate criminals to continue, as such, criminal case is terminated immediately a person is sentenced to death. Sentencing a person to life in prison can help the authorities to continue receiving the important evidences, which can assist in arresting the actual perpetrators of a crime (Simpson, 2013).
The capit...