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In Support of the Death Penalty
One afternoon in 1994, Megan Kanka,
a little girl of 7, was riding her bicycle outside her home
in New Jersey when a neighbor asked her if she wanted to see
his new puppy. He then took her into his home, raped her, and
strangled her with a belt. The man, a twice-convicted sex-offender
called Jesse Timmendequas, was sentenced to death in 1997. For
gruesome murders like this, the death penalty is the only appropriate
punishment. Justice is served only when the death penalty is
given to a criminal who has cruelly taken the life of another
person. Besides, there is no doubt that by executing those who
murder innocent victims in cold blood, society can prevent future
murders. Also, the appeals system that is in place today for
defendants in death penalty cases and the availability of advanced
forensic technology and DNA analysis have dramatically reduced
the possibility of executing the innocent by mistake. Therefore,
society should continue to apply the ultimate punishment to
deal with the most heinous crime.
Capital
punishment is not the way to maintain the balance of justice.
This balance is disturbed whenever a criminal takes the life
of another person, and it can be restored only if the same is
done to the killer as he has done to his victim. Moreover, the
loved ones of the victim get closure to their suffering when
the cause of their pain is removed. For a crime as vicious as
murder, the death penalty is the only fitting retribution. As
Robert Macy, District Attorney of Oklahoma City put it, allowing
predators who murder the innocent to live out the rest of their
lives "in some prison with three meals a day, clean sheets,
cable TV, family visits and endless appeals" is just unfair.
There are some individuals that forfeit their right to life
by the sheer evilness of their actions. They deserve to die.
No other punishment deters future
murders as the death penalty does because people fear death
more than anything else. As Professor Ernest van den Haage,
professor of jurisprudence at Fordham University, argues, people
especially fear "death deliberately inflicted by law and
scheduled by the courts." Throughout history, there have
been a variety of methods used for carrying out the death penalty,
such as the gas chamber, the electric chair, and more recently
the lethal injection. Society should make use of this fear and
apply the death penalty in order to prevent murder. There have
been some inconclusive studies which claim that the fear of
being given the death penalty has no deterrent effect on murder.
However, even if there is some truth to these studies, it is
because the death sentence is rarely given, and even when it
is, the actual execution is carried out too late to be a lesson
for potential murderers. Only if a punishment is swift does
it serve as a powerful deterrent. Even if one has doubts about
preventing future murders by means of the death penalty, one
cannot deny the simple fact that a killer that is killed will
never kill again.
Opponents of the death penalty
argue that innocent people might be killed by mistake. However,
advances in technology and the close review of death penalty
cases by appellate courts have made that fear unwarranted. Mistakes
made in relation to court procedures, evidence and witness testimony
are very likely to be discovered by a higher court that handles
the appeal. Furthermore, advances in forensic technology, particularly
DNA testing, have provided law enforcement agencies of today
with foolproof crime-solving methods. Therefore, while a handful
of innocent people may mistakenly be executed each year, most
of those who receive the death penalty are indeed guilty and
deserving of the ultimate punishment.
To sum up, a society that is faced
with the terrible reality of senseless murders should make use
of the death penalty to remove dangerous killers from its midst.
By executing those who kill, society teaches a lesson to potential
murderers and preserves the balance of justice. Besides, killing
the killer of an innocent victim lessens the pain of the victim's
family and relatives. Fortunately, we live in a time when a
meticulously organized criminal justice system and advanced
crime-solving technology have made the possibility of errors
almost non-existent. Therefore, we should use the death penalty
to punish murderers.
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