Okay all, I'm about to present my dearly beloved essay on Capital Punishment to you. I have thought a long time about allowing outsiders to see my young 'child' but after much consideration, I've decided that you are all semi-nice people ;P and it can't do much harm. Here goes, Persuasion essay for English. ::::::::::::::
For the last three centuries, there has been ceaseless conflict regarding the legitimacy of the death penalty. Some say it is too harsh and barbaric; others rejoin that it has its place and should indeed be used when appropriate. I cast my lot with the latter, and further, I contend that capital punishment is absolutely necessary for the survival of the justice system and maintaining a sense of guilt in the American people. Justice demands serious, permanent action to be taken against grave offenders, that victims of crime should be granted full compensation, and that others be deterred from committing similar crimes by example of the punishment sentenced to previous transgressors. No other form of punishment satisfies these requirements; not parole, manual labor, fines or even life in prison. Only the death penalty has what is necessary to serve justice in severe cases. This statement can be proved logically, legally, historically, and from a religious point of view.
Firstly, consider what justice is; it is the rendering of all that is due in a particular, individual circumstance. When a crime is committed, a burglary, for example, it is imperative that the criminal reimburse all money stolen and the value of what inconvenience his crime caused; this much is commonplace. When a man is guilty of slander, pilfering public funds, or any such offence, there must be a public retraction or repayment, but also some service to the public at large. This could take the form of community work, personally repairing the damage, fines, or short imprisonment. The punishment must fit the crime, however; no lesser and no greater. This is what justice means.
But here I have spoken of minor offenses. The perpetrators now mentioned, if justly sentenced, would assuredly learn from their mistakes and cease to violate the law. Certainly a death sentence has no place among petty theft and character assassination. Its place lies with murder, rape, child molestation, and inexorable felons; those who have committed crimes too great or numerous to remunerate in a single lifetime. Not all crimes can be repaid in the same manner in which they were committed. One cannot subject the offender to the same atrocities that he himself is guilty of. Knowing what vile crimes there are, this would be inhumane and a total conflict of interest. The only just action in the case of murder and brutal behavior is to take the offender’s life, the instrument with which he destroyed the life of another. As for those with innumerable offenses, after 176 years in prison their debt to society may be paid, but no felon will live that long, and his debt would go unpaid. This is unjust. The death penalty is also for those irreformable criminals who are a constant threat to the general welfare. Even persons opposed to the use of capital punishment grant this. “The death of a citizen cannot be necessary, but in one case. When, though deprived of his liberty, he has such power and connections as may endanger the security of the nation….” (Cesare Beccaria).
Human life is of infinite value and an absolute right; thus the constitution, government and judicial courts have always stated, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 3), and if one individual steals this divine right from a fellow citizen, he consequently forfeits his own claim to life; he pays for the life he took, with his own. “If you kill another, you kill yourself” (Immanuel Kant). This is the only way human life receives its full value, and the sole manner in which the victim can receive absolute justice and therefore be ‘avenged’. To assign merely a life sentence to a murderer is to cheapen the worth of innocent life; it is to put taking innocent life on the level of robbery and drug dealing. Furthermore, if death were not the punishment for such crimes as murder, think how many more killings and violent crimes we would face. What would there be to stop criminals in their tracks? Surely not life imprisonment; only so many life sentences can be heaped on one offender. Come on, what’s one more? This is no threat to prospective murderers. The fact is that the sentence of execution deters potential lawbreakers from criminal behavior.
Some say that the death penalty is unconstitutional, violating the eighth and fourteenth amendments on cruel and unusual punishment. However, the American justice system doesn’t think that claim to be true. In the case of Trop v. Dulles, (356, U.S.), Mr. Chief Justice Warren stated:
“Whatever arguments may be against capital punishment, both on moral grounds and in terms of accomplishing the purposes of punishment… the death penalty has been employed throughout our history, and, in a day when it is still widely accepted, it cannot be said to violate the constitutional concept of cruelty”.
And refusing a review in the death penalty case, Callins v. Collins, Justice Antonin Scalia confirmed that:
“The Fifth Amendment provides that ‘[n]o persons shall be held to answer for a capital…crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury…nor be deprived of life…without due process of law’. This clearly permits the death penalty to be imposed and establishes beyond doubt that the death penalty is not one of the ‘cruel and unusual punishments’ prohibited by the Eighth Amendment” (Congressional Quarterly Researcher, Vol. 5, No. 9).
Another reason for the preservation of the death penalty is that of its lengthy existence and success. Capital punishment has been employed as a deterring means for centuries, and from this fact it can be deduced that this form of punishment is effectual and does indeed have value. Obviously it works, or it would have been abandoned long ago. But, even if it didn’t work in deterring other criminals, it has still protected countless innocent persons from potential harm. John McAdams makes a very good point:
“If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murderers, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former”.
There is a also religious side of this debate about capital punishment. Is the death penalty moral? Is it ethical to take the life of a murderer, ever? even if it be to prevent further crimes? The Bible, the highest written authority in the Christian world, says yes. It is written, “Whosoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed: for man was made to the image of God” (Gen. 9:6) and “wrongdoers thou shalt not suffer to live” (Ex. 22:18). It does not mean that the ordinary citizens can go around avenging their lost ones. This condemnation is to be exercised by the government. This is shown if you read further, “For [the ruler] is God’s minister to thee, for good. But if thou do that which is evil, fear: for he beareth not the sword in vain. For he is God’s minister: an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil” (Romans 13:4). It’s interesting to note that the passage says ‘sword’, the instrument of execution; this obviously refers to capital punishment.
It’s also worthy of notice that, perhaps surprisingly, the majority of Americans support the death penalty. A poll taken by ABC News/Washington Post of 1082 adults in April of 2005 shows that 65% of Americans favor the death penalty for convicted murderers; 29% opposed, 6% undecided. And for the abduction and murder of children, a whopping 71% feel that the death penalty should be mandatorily sentenced, as shown in a 2002 Fox News poll of 900 adults nationwide (see citations). We can see that it’s a minority that opposes capital punishment; being a democracy, America is therefore pro death penalty.
So it is seen that capital punishment is necessary for justice to be served in grave cases, for the dignity of the victim to be protected, and for the discouragement of future crimes. Furthermore, the constitution and judicial courts, the Bible and the majority of Americans, condone the legality of the death penalty, as well as our ancestors from centuries ago. With these facts in mind, it’s hard to suppose that even a 29% can be in opposition to the historic means of punishment here considered.
3 comments:
WOW... too many words for me to read right now. :P I'll come back to it when I've got time, okay? :D I'm in the lab 'cuz I don't feel like studying but that's what I ought to be doing. :/ See ya! :)
So at last you give me the links to your blog, after who knows how much time spent reassuring you that everything will be fine, and then I go and jump right in with the criticism. Ah yes, by the time I am done with you and your article, your argumentation will look more tattered than Betty Ross' flag flying over the Capitol as the building was being burned by the Redcoats in 1812.
Actually, I am just kidding. It was a good article, but knowing me like you do, you shouldn't be surprised that I couldn't pass up an opportunity to add my own two cents worth--one cent is an addition or clarification and the other cent is a minor criticism.
Since my sanguine traits are limited, usually being held in check by the choleric and melancholic blend of schizophrenic tendencies (not really, of course) that I like to call my temperament, I shall begin with the small criticism. This is really less of a criticism than a balancing of the Catholic viewpoint. Firstly, all the while recognizing the necessity of spilling blood at times, the Church has always shunned bloodshed. The Inquisition notwithstanding for all of you critics out there, the Catholic Church has always been on the side of mitigating the formerly savage punishments of barbarian judicial customs. While allowing the practice of capital punishment as a legitimate means of justice, the Church has always forbidden both executioners and judges who have handed on death sentences, even justly, from receiving Holy Orders. The recognition of legitimacy of this duty of justice did not prevent the Church from declaring the men who perform such a duty as unfit to become 'alteri Christi.' The past three centuries have seen a number of theorists seek the abolition of the death penalty or at least its mitigation. How widespread of an application should be used? Cesare Beccaria (1735-1794) was one such judicial theorist. He was a man of the Enlightenment and was personally well acquainted with les philosophes of the French Revolution. His life's work was for the mitigation of criminal penalties, including the death penalty, reserving that penalty for those who violated the Social Contract in the style of Rousseau. However, you probably already knew all of this.
For the positive addition, I would like to establish a little more clearly the foundation for capital punishment in natural law. The argument for CP can be reduced to the following syllogism. Major: The State has the right to defend itself and its citizens using any necessary means. Minor: Capital punishment is a necessary means. Conclusion: The State has the right to use capital punishment.
To explain the major premise, we can use an analogy that everyone can understand and then extrapolate. I think that anyone would agree, that an individual has the right to kill another in self-defense. If the other person is unjustly violating one's right to life which every human being has and it gets to the point of either him or you, the individual has the right to defend himself to the point of taking the live of the other, if that is necessary. Since the state has the responsibility of preserving the common good, it has the same responsibility towards the lives of its citizens and the order of society. Almost everyone, even those those who support the abolition of the death penalty, recongize this right on the part of both the individual and the state.
However, the contingent part of the argument is in the minor premise. Here is primarily where the pro- and anti-death penalty people disagree. Is taking the life of the victim actually necessary for the preservation of the lives of citizens or of the order of the state? Catholic theologians, from St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas, have recognized that the legitimacy of the minor premise is dependent upon historical contingencies, e.g. one does not punish the average criminal the same way as a deserter in war. There must be some sort of urgency of the common good at stake, which is not necessarily just political stability. Do we really need to kill our criminals when we have such a good prison system thanks to modern technology and surveillance? It is an interesting argument and one that I don't have the time to really delve into at the moment, but is one that shouldn't be passed up too lightly, however. There are other issues to be weighed in the balance, such as justice and deterrence, which you brought up in your article.
To close I would still like to mention one argument that often takes precedence from the reasonable opposition mentioned above and that unfortunately finds favor with many in the Church today. This is the idea that capital punishment is wrong because it is an offense against the dignity of man, that is that man is inviolable simply because he is a man. Behind this reasoning is a theological tendency if not outright error that by inflicting the death penalty, the State would be preventing a human being from reaching his purpose of existence, that is, that his purpose is to be found in this life only. From a Catholic standpoint, the end of man is not to be found in this life, but in the next; so the death penalty does not prevent him from reaching that end. Of course, if the person dies in the state of mortal sin, that is a different matter, hence why in Catholic society and even in our own, the condemned always has access to a priest. What is more unpardonable is the mentality of those who seem to give to the state the complete power of determining an individual's final end. If this life is all that there is and if man achieves his final end in this life only, then the death penalty would give the state a totalitarian power over the final end of an individual that is inexcusable. Hence why I cringe when I hear the statements of the likes of Ron White, a comedian from Texas, who says, "When other states are trying to abolish the death penalty, my state is putting in an express lane. If you kill in our state, we will kill you back." However funny that may be, it hardly expresses a Catholic attitude about it.
So I went on a bit longer then I thought I would and have only scratched the surface of the issue. Big surprise. Your article was good and I look forward to hearing your comments from the post.
The Bro
Like, DUH! ;p
Do remember that I am not attending a Catholic college, so I can't very well use outright 'Roman' teaching to state my points. Also, this is not an article; it's a persuasive essay, to be from 4 to 6 pages. Further, as I should have liked, I did not address the opposition that innocent victims have been unlawfully executed, or discuss whether in this time of judicial corruption it would be prudent or desirable to make use of the death penalty. The length allowed for this assignment was not conducive to the enclusion of all possible information and view points, as much as I would have reveled in the depth.
P.S. I don't totally hate you.
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