Capital Punishment
The death penalty is something about which many people do not have a clear opinion. It is considered to be the punishment of execution, administered to someone convicted of a capital crime. Many people support the death penalty, while others wish for the death penalty to be abolished. My personal opinion on the death penalty is that it should be administered only in cases of certain crimes such as: serial murder, serial rape, and terrorism. Groups that support the death penalty often say that it deters criminals from committing future crimes like murders or other heinous crimes. On the contrary, many criminals do not think of the consequences of their actions when they are committing a crime, nor do they care what happens to them after the crime has been committed. Amnesty International, which opposes the death penalty, reports that, “Scientific studies have not produced any conclusive evidence showing that capital punishment is a deterrent for future crimes to be committed.” Nevertheless, the only deterrent for a murderer to not commit another heinous or viscous crime again would be execution by lethal injection, or by the way the victim died (The Innocence Project). Various people who are opposed to the death penalty also say that capital punishment sometimes condemns the innocent to die. According to Amendment five in the United States Bill of Rights, “No person shall be held to answer for a capital crime, or otherwise infamous crime unless on a presentment of an indictment of a grand jury”, except in military cases. Even though it is true that a few innocent people have “slipped through the cracks” of the justice system, and had been convicted and executed unfairly, it is extremely unlikely that this type of predicament would happen. By the time that all appeals are exhausted, it is most likely that the attorneys will find new evidence to support alleged criminals innocence from examining the case over and over again.
Cited: The English Standard Version Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments with Apocrypha. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.