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Justice and the “Death Penalty”
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- Category: The Chief's Rants
- Written by Harsh
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Read the news today that the US Supreme Court wants to outlaw Death Penalty through the use of lethal injections. Well, good for them! Its a barbaric practice and thank god we are becoming civilized were the thoughts that first came to mind.
Having thought over the death penalty and the crimes for which it would be possible for the court to give a judgement, I wonder whether it would be more humane to give the “death penalty” or “Life without parole”. From the view of the person judged and condemned would it be more humane and civilized to shackle his freedom to live a normal life(i am not saying all criminals are normal) or to finish it once and for all. Would it be more civilized to torture him day in and day out with the knowledge that he can never be free or to execute him?
The problem is manifold. Does the law and order process execute a criminal who may be released later and cause more deaths or keep them incarcerated for years till he dies, to serve no purpose whatever. People against the death sentence have obviously never been on the receiving end of the hurt and unending pain caused by the person in question but do we simply execute him? He might be innocent!
Studies have shown that nearly 15% of death sentence convictees are innocent. Then do we simply keep them in prison to live out the rest of their life in those confines? There have been numerous cases where escaped / supposedly reformed and on parole criminals have brutally raped, burgled, murdered people after being free again. They have sometimes even murdered people who had helped them be free in the first place.
There may never be a solution to this thorny problem. Though I suppose it would only be reasonable to ask the criminals themselves individually as to the option they want to choose or maybe have a gestation period of say 10 years before the execution date. If a person isn’t declared innocent by then then the chances of that happening seem remote