Final Essay Questions - Law Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Final Questions - Law - Essay Example Both these scripts have almost similar concept that an offender should give â€Å"life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand and foot for foot†. Many old scripts and various religious dogmas have considered death penalty as an effective punishment and have justified that death penalty only can give greatest justice to the victim who has been murdered or killed. Arguments against the death penalty emerged only in 1700s, when few writers and philosophers including Italian scholar Cesare Beccaria began to question whether the death penalty is justice and ethical. They argued that capital punishment is unethical and barbaric. According to their arguments, killing a criminal makes a nation more brutal (Guernsey, 2009, p. 10). Crimes that are punishable by death are called capital punishment. Murder is the only capital crime many countries that apply death penalty. Child rape, treason, aircraft hijacking etc are also considered to be capital crimes in some countries. At the very forefronts of the debate of death penalty lies deterrence theory, that has long been a cornerstone that many researchers and scholars have used to argue for the death penalty. Deterrence theory have several times been quoted by judges, persecutors, officials and legal authoritative people to justify death penalty (Gerber and Johnson, 2007, p. 62). The basic consensus of the deterrence theory is that death penalty serves a general deterrence to crime. Based on studies, Mandery (2005, p. 49) concluded that there is wide consensus among America’s top criminologists that the death penalty does or it can reduce the rates of criminal violence among the society. People are more likely to be afraid of punishment. Strong punishment remains to be stronger shield for the criminals to get rid of their common criminal attitude. As Marzilli (2008, p. 21) observed, a strongest argument for the death penalty is its deterrence value that is based on common sense. People are afrai d of dying and hence people will be discouraged by the possibility of being sentenced to death for committing certain crimes that will cause them death. US Criminal Justice system has supported this straight forward logic. Almost all the people who were sentenced to death were appealing their sentence and this showed that they did not wish to die. Death penalty is morally correct because it is an effective method to provide the greatest justice for the victim and to alleviate the psychic pain of the victim’s family and relatives or friends etc. Alleviation of the psychic pain is more evident from family members and political followers etc. Death penalty circulates a moral statement to the public that there is a common behaviour that is more unacceptable to the community that one who indulges in killing, murdering or raping a child will be forfeited his right to live (Siegel, 2009, p. 513). When a criminal is killed by the law due to his criminal behaviour of killing others, t he community will be safe and the society will no longer be afraid of his mischief, and this supports the argument that death penalty is morally correct. Death penalty not only deters others people from doing such behaviors, but also saves community from people who are threats to social life as well. Rational Calculator Model Gerber and Johnson (2007, p. 63) found that supporters of the death penalty including Professor Pojman claims that death penal