Capital Punishment Should Stay
Introduction
Since the inception of civil society, one of the most sensitive arguments is whether or not the societies need to practice death penalty as one of their protective legal arms. Both the sides have strong points to defend their case and for that matter, apparently look evenly poised. Therefore, this essay explores the issue under the light of appropriate literature and comes into its own conclusion after presenting its thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
A. Thesis: Death penalty should be abolished.
Reason 1: It is not deterrent.
There is no conclusive proof that its instance would deter prospective murders, and on the contrary, lower murder rates are observed in the States of United States, which do not employ death penalty. A survey conducted among the past and present presidents of country's top criminological society’s shows that 84% of them subscribes to the view that death penalty can produce deterrent effect on the prospective murderers. Even someone like Jim Mattox, former Texas Attorney General, who presided over many of the executions there, holds the view that "those executed in Texas were not deterred by the existence of the death penalty law" (Death Penalty, 2001).
On the contrary, life imprisonment can work wonders in the lives of these offenders, where it can influence them to settle into a routine life and thus ensuring no further threat from them. As for the testimony in rebuttal to deterrence, the excerpts from The Case against the Death Penalty (Bedau, 1997) can reviewed, Where Hugo Adam Bedau, the Austin Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University, says, "Persons who commits murder and other crimes of personal violence either may or may not premeditate their crimes."
Bedau's observation points towards two vital factors associated with murder or other crimes of violence. One, crimes like murder or violence may be a momentary lapse from the part of the...