Death Penalty

Death penalty

In recent years the protests against the abolition of the death penalty have been increasing rapidly. Many say that execution of a murderer is not the only means of punishment. Why choose the death penalty when there are other means of punishment?

In countries such as the U.S.A, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq murderers are executed in the most brutal ways. In Saudi Arabia people are slaughtered in public. In America criminals are mostly executed either by lethal injection or electrocution. In Utah murderers are bound to a chair and shot by firing squads. Many studies have shown that this has not stopped the crime rate from rising in the countries where the death penalty is legal.

One could say that justice is done, only when the murderer is put to death for taking the life of another human being. It is believed that this act is fair to the victim's family and friends.

Records have shown that in Saudi Arabia more than 1,100 people have been executed in the past twenty years. The prisoners are blindfolded and taken out into the public where the executioner raises a sword, and brings the blade down across the prisoner's neck. The punishment would act as a deterrent to the public but has it stopped the crime rate from escalating. Statistics have shown that it has not.

Executing a murderer may also give emotional relief to the murderer's family. It makes them cope better with the burden that a family member has killed another human being. In America, some of the murderer's family members come to watch the execution in the belief that justice is been done.

Of course one can say that by executing a murderer the executioner becomes a murderer himself. No one in this world has the right to decide over the life of another.

Studies have shown that in the U.S.A 10 % of the executed were innocent and that 95 people have been taken out of the death row in 30 years because they have been wrongly convicted. These statistics only proves that governments need to rethink the death penalty as innocent lives may be spared.

Amnesty International and many others who oppose the death penalty believe that it is a inhuman and degrading punishment. It is up to the respective countries to decide whether the death penalty is really a deterrent in preventing future crimes.