Have you seen the movie, Dead Man Walking? The movie is based on a real story that Sister Helen Prejean experienced. She works in a poor black ghetto, but gets a letter from Matthew Poncelet in prison and goes to visit him. She is scared and uneasy in her first visit ever to a prison, but agrees to help him file new appeals and find him a new lawyer. Matthew Poncelet committed his crime in 1988. He and his buddy found two teenagers kissing in a car in a wooded lovers lane area. They pulled them out of the car, raped the girl, viciously stabbed them and then shot them in the back of the head. The audience is quickly convinced that this guy did it. Nevertheless, he claims he only watched while his buddy did the rape and the murders. His buddy, of course, claims just the opposite is true. She and his lawyer assure that he is the murder after they watch the tape that includes spot of murder and his press interview. Despite of that, they try him to escape death penalty. In spite of their effort, Matthew Poncelet is not able to escape the punishment and the date of execution is decided. After all, he is punished with death. This movie shows me the irrationality and cruelty of capital punishment.
             As you see in the movie, death penalty is cruel and irrational. Cesare Beccaria, an Italian criminologist, argued that capital punishment had a brutalizing effect on society. He said,
             The punishment of death is pernicious to society, from the examples of barbarity that it affords. If the passions, or the necessity of war, have taught men to shed the blood of their fellow creatures, the laws, which are intended to moderate the ferocity pf mankind, should not increase it by examples of barbarity, the more horrible, as this punishment is usually attended with formal pageantry. Is it not absurd, that the laws, which detest and purnish homicide, should, in order to prevent murder, publicly commit murder themselves? (Beccaria)
             Due...