Capital Punishment

Running head: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 1
Capital Punishment
Name
Institution

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 2
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
Introduction
In the United States, Capital punishment remains one of the controversial topics of
discussion since its initiation in the year 1609. Capital punishment or the death penalty is a legal
penalty given to individuals who have been founded guilty of capital murder. Presently, capital
punishment remains recognized as a suitable punishment for murder convictions in fifty-four
countries and thirty States globally. In the application of capital punishment, there remain ethical
problems that may arise, for example, retribution, hypocrisy, as well as the likely killing of
hundreds of women and men who have been mistakenly convicted. This paper will mainly
demonstrate that while many people may feel as though an individual who commits murder
forfeits their right more so to life and deserves to die, as for me the system that allows for the
killing of people is not morally justified. And through the actualization and implementation of
capital punishment, the justice system infringes a moral duty by killing which remains erratic
with universal law. Therefore, the death penalty is ethically and morally unjust.
First of all, there is no tangible evidence showing that capital punishment deters crime
(Sarat, 2018). Many studies comparing murder and crime rates in the United States that have the
penalty of death against those that don’t have the penalty of death found little dissimilarity
between the two. These unsatisfying findings mean that the penalty of death may or may not stop
crime.
Contrary to a well-known belief, capital punishment is truly more expensive as compared
to keeping an individual (an inmate) in reformatory, even for life. Though the cost of the
execution of an individual may be minimal, the total costs surrounding cases of capital
punishment remain enormously high (Donohue, 2016). Many researchers affirm that defending