The capital punishment must be abolished. As of 2013, 58 countries, including countries such as the United States, China, Japan, Egypt, Pakistan, and Lebanon, are still practicing capital punishment, or “death penalty” whereas 140 countries have already abolished in law or practice(1). The humanity has seen a long, oftentimes bloody and cruel, history of capital punishment since ancient time (going back as far as Babylonian era) to present day. Many have contributed their view about this often heatedly debated issue. Here, I argue that the capital punishment should be abolished in all countries and present the alternative to this practice so that the issues surrounding this problem could be solved by effective, but not cruel or inhuman, means. In order to draw that conclusion, I would first present the brief history of the capital punishment itself, its role in the current society, and the problems surrounding this issue.
First off, what is the capital punishment? It is a “legal process whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime.” (For the sake of this paper, I would use the terms, “capital punishment” and “death penalty” interchangeably.) In the ancient times, the capital punishment was used to execute people not necessarily for justice, but both to punish criminals and to suppress political dissent. The execution took many forms, such as breaking wheel, boiling to death, slow slicing, crucifixion, dismemberment, burning, etc. Many of them proved to be inhuman and cruel, subjecting the victims to excruciating pain that could last for days before they could die. The prolonged death and torture of those punished were meant for public warning and a form of entertainment in some era. Even though some of them were practiced arbitrarily, many were according to the law, as in the case of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ under the Roman Empire.
Today, the capital punishment (in the U.S.) is carried out by one of five lawful means:...