Capital punishment

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The supposed deterrent effect is also dubious: no-one (?) commits a crime anticipating that they will be apprehended and ''punished'' - it's always ''the other guy'' who gets caught. Additionally there is the "might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb" effect - once someone is subject to the ultimate penalty, there is nothing to hold them back.  Once the "point of no return" has been reached (i.e., rape, murder, etc.), there is no longer a deterrent to further crimes to avoid capture and punishment. ''(admittedly this holds true whatever the ultimate penalty is - be it lifelong imprisonment, death or deportation!)''
 
The supposed deterrent effect is also dubious: no-one (?) commits a crime anticipating that they will be apprehended and ''punished'' - it's always ''the other guy'' who gets caught. Additionally there is the "might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb" effect - once someone is subject to the ultimate penalty, there is nothing to hold them back.  Once the "point of no return" has been reached (i.e., rape, murder, etc.), there is no longer a deterrent to further crimes to avoid capture and punishment. ''(admittedly this holds true whatever the ultimate penalty is - be it lifelong imprisonment, death or deportation!)''
  
There is also the rather abstract concept that a state is subservient to its people, and may never take their lives for any reason.
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There is also the rather abstract concept that sovereignty is rooted in the people, and that the state's primary responsibility is to ensure the security and well-being of the people whose consent lend it sovereignty and legitimacy.
  
 
==See also==
 
==See also==

Revision as of 01:29, 23 September 2009

Capital punishment is the application of the death penalty as a punishment for crime.

The name comes from the pig latin apocay, or "head", which in many early forms of this punishment was "removed" from the offender in order to reduce their future offense rate.

Contents

Death penalty laws

While most cultures of the world have historically used capital punishment, many countries, particularly Western and democratic ones, have moved, or are moving, away from the application of this punishment.[1] Italian philosopher and politician Cesare Beccaria condemned capital punishment in his 1764 treatise On Crimes and Punishments. Early moves towards abolition began in some European countries during the mid 19th century, but the move away from capital punishment gathered momentum a century later, in the years following the Second World War, as human rights became a more significant political issue.

The 1950 European Convention on Human Rights recommended that the death penalty be abolished in European nations or restricted to times of war. This has been ratified within European Union member countries over the following decades, so that capital punishment is now no longer practised in Europe. The United Kingdom abolished the death penalty for virtually all offences in 1969 (although it still remained a theoretically valid sentence for treason until 1998). In December 2007 the United Nations General Assembly approved a moratorium on the death penalty, which calls for a worldwide suspension (not necessarily abolition) of capital punishment. The moratorium is not binding, but established an international consensus against the death penalty.

The United States is a significant exception to the western trend towards abolition, with many states still applying the ultimate penalty for serious and/or repeated crime. In 1972 a moratorium was placed on executions by the Supreme Court, not because capital punishment itself was ruled unconstitutional but because of perceived procedural flaws. After these were ironed out, executions resumed in 1976. Capital punishment is still exercised in 36 states; states with no capital punishment are Alaska, most of New England and parts of the Midwest.[2]. Sadly, injustices are still regularly discovered.

Capital punishment also remains in most of Asia, numerous African countries and the Middle East. Usage varies from nation to nation. For example, in the United States the death penalty is usually reserved for homicide-related crimes, and in Japan for multiple homicides. Some countries, such as Russia and South Korea, still retain death penalty laws but have stopped issuing death sentences in recent years. In communist China, the death penalty is applied for various crimes against the state, including high levels of embezzlement and tax evasion, murder and child-molesting, and killing pandas. Executions happen very quickly in China, so quickly that the government maintains a fleet of "execution vans" that condemned prisoners are hustled into, killed, and popped right out the other end. In India, drug trafficking can be a capital offence. Some Islamic nations such as Mauritania, Yemen, Sudan, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have capital laws against sodomy and sometimes adultery, as well as apostasy (abandoning religion or converting to another faith). [3]

Support

In the United States, many Evangelical Christians support the death penalty despite being "Pro-Life", making the distinction between "innocent" life and non-innocent life. Judgement is not, as is often stated, left to God. Of course, without capital punishment, their religion would have had a lot of trouble getting started.

Capital punishment is generally supported by conservatives - you know, the ones against abortion because they hold to the sanctity of life, yet somehow seem to feel that an adult life has no particular sanctity if it is being lived by a person who, for whatever reason, has committed a particular crime. We cannot understand that dichotomy because, quite frankly, it's too fucking stupid.

Opposition

The Roman Catholic Church is now relatively consistent in its pro-life stance, opposing both abortion and most cases of capital punishment.[4]

Opponents of capital punishment usually cite a number of reasons for their position, from their view that it is institutionalized barbarism, to the small but significant number of cases where the death penalty has been enacted and the victim has been subsequently demonstrated to be innocent of the crime for which (generally) he, suffered the ultimate penalty. There is (in the U.S.) currently a program funding DNA testing of evidence to exonerate potentially wrongly convicted inmates on death row, which is producing a steady trickle of freed prisoners.

Another issue for the U.S. and its continued use of the death penalty is the evident racial bias in its application. Black males are far more likely to be sentenced to death for similar or even lesser crimes than white males. A gender bias is also evident, with very few women receiving the death penalty. Both of these biases indicate to outside observers that in spite of the protestations of its supporters that the death penalty is all about deterrence, it has a much murkier rationale that puts the whole process on a very dubious footing.

The supposed deterrent effect is also dubious: no-one (?) commits a crime anticipating that they will be apprehended and punished - it's always the other guy who gets caught. Additionally there is the "might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb" effect - once someone is subject to the ultimate penalty, there is nothing to hold them back. Once the "point of no return" has been reached (i.e., rape, murder, etc.), there is no longer a deterrent to further crimes to avoid capture and punishment. (admittedly this holds true whatever the ultimate penalty is - be it lifelong imprisonment, death or deportation!)

There is also the rather abstract concept that sovereignty is rooted in the people, and that the state's primary responsibility is to ensure the security and well-being of the people whose consent lend it sovereignty and legitimacy.

See also

Footnotes

  1. http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-index-eng
  2. See WP: Image: Death penalty statutes in the United States.svg.
  3. See the Wikipedia article on Use of capital punishment by nation.
  4. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/angel/procon/popestate.html retrieved Aug. 26 2008
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