The Golden Trident

By Chloe Martin

Photo Courtesy of: Counterpoint: The Death Penalty Is Appropriate – InsideSources 

It is argued and people believe that, “a just society requires the taking of a life for a life.” According to  Arguments for and Against the Death Penalty, in 27 out of the 50 states in America the death penalty, aka capital punishment, is still legal. This is also true for countries like Singapore, Japan, and Taiwan. It is also still partially legal in Israel, meaning that this penalty is only for exceptional crimes or during circumstances like wars. In all of the places where it is legal, the death penalty is imposed on people that have committed capital offenses such as murder, genocide, or treason. A jury has to decide whether a person is fit and deserves the punishment of the death penalty. 

It is widely stated with lots of evidence that shows that ”the death penalty is no more effective than imprisonment in deterring murder.” There are a lot of pros and cons to the death penalty, but as it is a sensitive matter most of the pros are very frowned upon. Whether or not a person should be sentenced to death fully depends on factors like whether the person was sane or insane and whether the crime was committed in self-defense or was a crime of passion.

Today the act of putting people to death is more humane than it has ever been before, using lethal injections. The methods used in the past were always painful and cruel like hanging or the electric chair where people would gather around to watch. There are people that would argue that it should be painful because they are criminals, but others who would argue that ending their life would be punishment enough.

In my opinion, people should be sentenced to the death penalty if they are said to be “insane” or cannot be rehabilitated. These people have committed horrible crimes, but usually do not have any remorse for their actions and also would not benefit from the time they spend in prison. They would usually not register their time in prison as a punishment. Furthermore, they would take up space in the prison, leading to overcrowding. 

There are a lot of cons to the death penalty. One of them being the rare occasion that people are wrongly convicted of crimes they did not do. This is easily fixed when people are just put in prison because you can always let them out, but when they are sentenced to death for a crime they did not commit then an innocent person has just been killed. This also means that once they have figured out that they executed the wrong person, if they ever do, the actual criminal or murderer is still walking free. The process of sentencing and the ways they are executed can be more costly than life imprisonment.

So many different people have so many different opinions about the death penalty as it is such a sensitive topic. For that reason, nobody wants to talk about it, so it is rather just kept to the side to decide on at a later time by the leaders of each country or state. I don’t think that it will ever be fully legalized or illegalized around the world, but rather will just be something that people will go back and forth on or change opinions over time.