The morality of death penalty is an extremely controversial question in the modern era. While no one really argues in favor of such an extreme penalty for small or intermediate law violations, two conflicting opinions exist with respect to highly serious crimes. This essay will discuss both view points while showing that a middle ground is an optimum.
Proponents of death penalty for excessive crimes base their morality on religious textbooks and natural law. For instance, Jewish and Islamic jurispudences explicitly put forward the argument of “an eye for an eye”, meaning an equivalent punishment. A close observation of animal kingdoms, such as ants and apes, shows a consistent application of this concept in nature. Furthermore, such a punishment has been adopted for almost the entire history of human beings. The main argument here is that not only does this punishment ensures complete justice, but it would also prevent future criminals from doing hainous crimes, such as intentional murder and sex trafficking. As an example, crime records in the US over the past century have consistently shown a clear pattern of low murder rates in the states that adopt the death sentence.
On the other hand, opponents of death panelty argue that this punishment is too cruel and backward, even when applied to a guilty convict. From their standpoint, we have been living in a modern, civilized society for centuries now, and these laws should have been abandoned decades ago. Because of the continually enhancing, yet still limited procedure of evidence collection, they stress that convicts should till be given the benefit of doubt. After all, killing people for crimes they have not comit is far much worse than prisoning actual murders for life. A recent TV series from the United States, titled “When They See Us”, focused on this exact point. A group of young teenagers were wrongly prisoned for life for a crime they have not done in reality. Only after 20 years, the investigators were able to reopen the case and find new DNA evidence that proves their innocence. This raised the question: What could have happened if the events took place in a state with a possible death sentence?
In my estimation, there is a tradeoff between these two opinions. Specifically, I believe that the penality should only be applied to criminals with undeniable crimes, especially those where the damage is uncontrollable and extends beyound individual victims. Three prominent examples of this are children trafficking, murder without a motivation (i.e., just for fun), and mass poisioning of drinking water sourses. Only when it is possible to prove those crimes without doubt, the death penalty should be applied.