The use of capital punishment has been a permanent fixture in society since the earliest
civilizations and continues to be used as a form of punishment in countries today. It has
been used for various crimes ranging from the desertion of soldiers during wartime to the
more heinous crimes of serial killers. However, the mere fact that this brutal form of
punishment and revenge has been the policy of many nations in the past does not
subsequently warrant its implementation in today's society. The death penalty is morally
and socially unethical, should be construed as cruel and unusual punishment since it is both
discriminatory and arbitrary, has no proof of acting as a deterrent, and risks the atrocious
and unacceptable injustice of executing innocent people. As long as capital punishment
exists in our society it will continue to spark the injustice which it has failed to curb.
Capital punishment is immoral and unethical. It does not matter who does the
killing because when a life is taken by another it is always wrong. By killing a human
being the state lessens the value of life and actually contributes to the growing sentiment in
today's society that certain individuals are worth more than others. When the value of life
is lessened under certain circumstances such as the life of a murderer, what is stopping
others from creating their own circumstances for the value of one's life such as race, class,
religion, and economics. Immanual Kant, a great philosopher of ethics, came up with the
Categorical Imperative, which is a universal command or rule that states that society and
individuals "must act in such a way that you can will that your actions become a universal
law for all to follow" (Palmer 265). There must be some set of moral and ethical
standards that even the government can not supersede, otherwise how can the state expect
its citizens not to follow its own example. ...