Death penalty or capital punishment is the judicial process of executing an individual or a convict as an act or an instance of punishing for the offense either committed or not. Although, it is mostly known that such crimes as capital crimes or capital offenses are the ones that lead to the death penalty. Hence, cut through or off (severing) of the head or hanging are categorized as a capital crime.
If we are to look at the issues related to the death penalty’s way of proceeding, one will know and understand that the only reason it doles out is all about vengeance or punishment. However, it is badly and essentially flawed in the preceding process or formal request and it’s a grievous process and continuing risk in the manner of judgment and executing innocent people thereby costing much more than life imprisonment on the culprit.
However, the death penalty should only be an alternative in situations where assurance of guilt can be made through DNA and other actual and undeniable proofs (Elshtain and Owens 1).
The most worrying aspect of this process is that several guiltless people have been sentenced to death or life imprisonment. Although most of them were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, fortunately, or luckily were exonerated, discharged, and acquitted.
Research carried out on most homicides by the criminal investigation department in charge of homicide cases didn’t guarantee the trial of innocent people, but once the case has been investigated and finalized, and the convicted person is found innocent or not guilty of the charges, the convict must be released from the prison or freed but in a situation whereby the death penalty has been passed on the convict and the process undertaken there won’t be ways of resurrecting the convict from the grave.
However, a shocking and agonizing situation is that of the death penalty which is costlier and deadlier than life imprisonment in a way that, the convict can always gain freedom someday because the proceeding has all the legal documents backing it.
Though the grievous cost of the death penalty is for the complicated legal processes, and the astonishing case is that the convict is sentenced to jail at the beginning of the preceding process, before the pre-trial process and the trial itself. They forget that one is innocent until proven guilty so innocent people should not be executed until proven guilty.
Although, the families of the slain victims are distant from or unanimous on the subject of the death penalty. Nonetheless, those who have supported the death penalty initially have made the declaration that the protracted death penalty process is painful to them and that life without parole is a suitable option.
In addition to this, life without parole also avoids one to commit a second or subsequent offense which is an important fact to reckon with, and although sending one to jail costs less than the penalty.
Subsequently, the death penalty does not prevent other culprits or murderers from committing murder, hence the rates of homicide cases are becoming high and rampant in some states and regions most especially where there has been such practice for a long. Consequently, the process of the death penalty or capital punishment has always been practiced in virtually all countries, but it is being abolished gradually of late in most countries.
Works cited
Megivern, James J. The Death Penalty: An Historical and Theological Survey. New York: Paulist Press, 1997.
Sullivan, Dennis, and Larry Tifft. Restorative Justice: Healing the Foundations of Our Everyday Lives, Criminal Justice Pr, 2001.
James J. Megivern. The Death Penalty: An Historical and Theological Survey (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997).
Helen Prejean. The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions (New York: Random House, 2005).
Elshtain, Eric P., and Owens Erik C. Religion and the death penalty: a call for reckoning. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004.
Helen Prejean. The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions (New York: Random House, 2005).
Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking (New York: Random House, 1993).
Megivern, James J. The Death Penalty: An Historical and Theological Survey. New York: Paulist Press, 1997.
Sullivan, Dennis and Larry, Tifft. Restorative Justice: Healing the Foundations of Our Everyday Lives, Criminal Justice Pr, 2001.