CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
Capital Punishment is a legal infliction o death for violating criminal law. Throughout history people have been put to death using different methods of execution. The method that the US Government has been using is the lethal injection. This is the administration of a fatal amount of a fast action drug that paralyzes the person’s heart. It is a sterilized and impersonalized method of execution that does not eliminate the brutality of the penalty. This can be compared with the euthanasia in animals, which is putting them to sleep because they are sick or too old. But in this case, it is not an animal. How can the law or society “put to sleep” a human being? The death penalty is degrading the humanity of the person punished. Here is definitely a human right issue involving the proper limit of Government power. When the DNA testing was developed in 1973, more than 100 people sentenced to death have been exonerated. How many other innocent people remain on death row? How many innocent people have been executed? Somehow those people were wrongfully imprisoned and sentenced to death; therefore, some mistakes have been made. It can be an inadequate legal representation, police and prosecutorial misconduct, false testimony, or racial prejudice. In my opinion capital punishment should be banned from criminal law. Other alternatives can be used to control crime instead of the death penalty. The worst punishment should be a true life sentence, which is, imprisoning with no possibility of release. This kind of sentence could effectively isolate criminals from a community.
SOL M. RYAN
