Capital Punishment (Essay Sample)

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Capital punishment
The death penalty is the act of executing a man by lawful process as punishment to an unlawful acts committed by the individual. The punishment by death penalty has been around since the conception of human civilization. Despite the fact that the methods used have changed, the thought is still the same. It is a method of punishment for overwhelming serious criminal acts. According to Guernsey (13), these crimes are known as capital offenses or capital crimes. The death penalty has been practiced in numerous societies. The discussions and debates over the death penalty have been boiling over on for endless number of years. The death penalty has been utilized for a large number of years because of the physiological trepidation it exacts on the individuals who witness and find out about capital punishment.
The utilization of this form of punishment has served to lessen rates of crime and adjust the brains of future criminals to dissuade them against carrying out terrible wrongdoings like murder, injustice, terrorism, espionage and kidnappings. Backers say it discourages wrongdoing while abolitionists say it is illegal (Siegel 121). The most noticeably awful repulsiveness of the criminal justice framework is the execution of an innocent individual. Over a long period of time, proof has demonstrated an unsatisfactorily high risk of sentencing innocent individuals in a criminal justice framework that is so defective.
A few late executions have demonstrated that deadly injection which is rampantly used for executions can frequently be agonizing and inclined to failure that ends up torturing the executed individual. Lately, as pharmaceutical makers have withdrawn consent to utilize their medications in executions, states have much of the time neglected to acquire safe options and been compelled to cover their executions under shrouds of mystery. The outcome has been an absence of responsibility for state governments in connection to mess up executions (Sorensen and Pilgrim 12).
A method for defending capital punishment is that is seen as a technique which can be made into an exhibition for the general public. This thus builds up the manner of thinking that those found guilty are no longer wanted to be part of human society and thus must be dealt with in a way that is esteemed proper. According to Chenwi (59), the human rights as natives of the United States apply to the upright and good individuals and the bad individuals in equal measure.
Many people argue that death penalty makes the families of the murdered individual to feel contented and well relieved compared to life imprisonment. Others also feel that death penalty reduces crowding in prisons which results to high government expenditures to feed those in prisons. All these try to justify the need t carry out death penalties for individuals who have committed capital offenses. However, there are more other arguments that do not support capital punishment regardless of the type of crime committed.
According to Hood (141), the costs involved in pushing for capital punishment are much higher than those for imprisonment. This is due to the multiple numbers of trials and appeals involved in such cases. There is also high risk of executing an innocent individual in cases with weak defense teams. As much as executing the murderer gives the family of the murdered individual some form of satisfaction, it does not bring back the murdered person back to life.
According to Roza (4), the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution denies the national government from forcing extreme bail, inordinate fines, or merciless and surprising punishment to criminal respondents who have been sentenced of a crime. This implies that the government cannot force a punishment that is terribly disproportionate to the reality of the offense. In a criminal case, a judge has the capacity to recommend lawful penalties and punishments for litigants.
Nonetheless, there are a few established rules that shield defendants from exorbitantly unforgiving or out of ordinary punishments. The vast majority of these limitations on criminal sentencing can be found in the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The 8th Amendment expresses that in a criminal case, extreme bail might not be obliged, unnecessary fines should not be forced and pitiless and surprising punishment should not be d...