Capital Punishment
In any modern and progressive society, the government, judiciary andcitizens alike, work towards achieving justice to all individuals. This iswidely evident given current movements in the areas of social welfare,elimination of all kinds of social discrimination, and protection of basichuman rights to life and liberty. It is in the light of this context thatone needs to examine whether the death penalty or capital punishment hasany place in a social system that otherwise professes to be just and fair.While it is an undeniable truth that society must have an effective legalsystem in order to prevent crime and other unjust acts through holding outthe threat of punishment, there is ample ground to question whether capitalpunishment is a just means of doing so. Indeed, as this paper willdemonstrate, capital punishment has no place in a just and fair society andmay, in fact, constitute a form of injustice. The only real perspective from which it can be argued that capitalpunishment brings about justice is if its existence served to deter furtherhomicides and therefore prevent the recurrence of injustice. Indeed, thishas been the principle argument of the proponents of capital punishment
but thelong and painful example of a man deprived of his liberty. Of these 139 weresentenced to die. entionists) on the basis that the threat of the death penalty wouldscare potential criminals. If, on the other hand, it is made discretionarythen its application becomes arbitrary, discriminatory and erratic. Besides these aspects, another highly importantreason for abolishing capital punishment is the evidence, which clearlyestablishes that capital punishment cases often end up in no justice atall. It is not the terrible yet momentary spectacle of death. As support for his claim, Haines cites a law review article,published in 1987, which revealed that the risk of fatal miscarriages ofjustice was all too real: ". However, this theory has been largely disprovedby a number of research studies. Assuch, a just and fair society would be better off in determiningalternative forms of punishment such as life imprisonment without parole onthe grounds that this would not only constitute a harsher sentence butensure that such criminals are not left free to cause further harm tosociety.
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