Prof. Dania Adra
English 203 , section 45
23 October 2015
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/28/execution_saves_innocents/
Butchakjian 1
Before I start, I wanted to say that I have changed my opinion many
times about death penalty. But after many researches I am almost sure about my
point of view.
When someone kills another person, doesn’t justice demand
the killer’s life? It is argued that death penalty acts as a homicide. Also death
penalty it self is a crime. Death penalty is murder, and two wrongs don’t make
a right. There is no point in killing people who have committed murder because
then no one has been thought a lesson. Another reason to ban death penalty is
that taking an additional life does not resolve the problem. So why should
society behave like it’s worst elements? The point of civilization and
evolution is to rise above the worst in us. In addition to that a lot of
innocents have been executed because of miscarriage of justice. These errors
may come from the fact that naturally humans tend to commit mistakes or more
commonly from the desire of powerful people to mask their fallacies by
condemning inocents. Death penalty is in fact racist, poor people are more
exposed to it than rich people who pay their way off. Furthermore, it has
recently been proven that DNA determines a lot of our personalities. So people
who commit murder are ill and genetically predetermined and we don’t have the right
to kill them, as we don’t have the right to kill people who have Down syndrome.
As human beings we are all equal, and thus have no right to weigh the value of
other people’s life even if they committed a crime. Who are we to endorse God’s
role (or any other supreme power depending on your belief)? Just one person in
a 7 billion (population), with no right to judge and decide of someone’s
destiny. Instead we could build rehabilitation centers to heal crime committers
and reintroduce them in society.
Seeing things in another perspective (Jeff Jacoby’s and a
lot off pro-capital punishment) we could note that for many criminals
incarceration is not even punishment. In fact they are provided with a shelter,
food, health care and more shockingly they can access the Internet and practice
sports that hey like (which some innocent and disadvantaged people lac). We
shouldn’t forget that we are paying (by the intermediate of taxes) for their
comfort. So death penalty would help eliminate these charges and use this money
to help innocent people. According to Jacoby the “68 percent error rate “ is
wrong and “death penalty in America is probably the most
accurately administered criminal sanction in the world”. He then adds that each
execution saves the lies of many innocents. Which is not a bad argument after
all because usually the sentenced to death penalty are serial killers. Jacoby
then refers to a study that shows the relationship between execution and murder
rates. According to that study at the University of Colorado: “each additional
execution reduces homicides by five to six”. Additionally we shouldn’t see
death penalty in a micro level but in a macro level and conclude that it is
beneficial to the population (the mass) even though it is a disadvantage for
others.
Work cited
Jacoby, Jeff. “Execution saves innocents…” The Boston Globe.
N.p., 28 Sep. 2003.
moodle
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