Capital Punishment

• Capital punishment


  A legal process whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime
• Capital offences


  Crimes that can result in a death penalty
• Capital punishment was formally abolished in the UK in 1998 (the last execution was in 1964)
• Crimes resulting in the death penalty in some countries


  • Drug related offences
  • Adultery
  • Blasphemy
• Grossly unfair trials and executions of people who were under the age of 18 at the time of the crime
• Secrecy still surrounds the use of the death penalty in many countries
• Numerous governments still continue to ignore international legal standards
• China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Singapore executed people for drug related offences in 2022
• This is in violation of international human rights law which prohibits the death penalty for crimes which do not meet the threshold for the 'most serious crimes'
• Methods used for capital punishment around the world


  • Hanging
  • Poison gas
• Hanging (if properly conducted)


  A humane method where the neck is broken and death comes quickly
• If the free-fall distance is inadequate, the prisoner ends up slowly being strangled to death
• If the free-fall distance is too great, the rope will tear the prisoner's head off
• Poison gas


  Cyanide is dropped into acid producing Hydrogen Cyanide, a deadly gas that takes many minutes of agony before a person dies
• Capital punishment is a large topic of debate with many moral issues surrounding it
• Taking away a human life


  Goes against the human right article 3 which prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
• Sooner or later innocent people will be killed by mistakes when identifying criminals
• When people see our human rights being ignored, they will have more fear over the power that the government has and how we aren't as protected as we believe we are
• Humanists don't support capital punishment
• Amnesty International is against capital punishment because it takes away the right to life and is irreversible
• Since 1973, more than 191 prisoners sent to death row in the USA have later been exonerated or released from death row on grounds of innocence
• In many cases, people were executed after being convicted in grossly unfair trials, on the basis of torture-tainted evidence and with inadequate legal representation
• In some countries death sentences are imposed as the mandatory punishment for certain offences, meaning that judges are not able to consider the circumstances of the crime or of the defendant before sentencing
• I disagree with the statement that some people lose their right to life when they take away the lives of others
• Premeditated killing


  Requires that the defendant had intent to kill and some willful deliberation to kill, rather than killing on a sudden impulse
• The criminal may become comfortable knowing that they are going to be killed
• Once the decision has been made, the criminal knows when they are going to die and how it will be done, many criminals find comfort within this as they know they have an easy way out and won't have to suffer any longer
• This has negative consequences as it doesn't give justice to the victim or their families
• Humanists believe that premeditated killing is wrong and don't understand how it could be justified
• The Humanist approach would be to look at the evidence to see if this checks out
• Humanists think we shouldn't believe in ideas just because we like them or wish they were true
• Humanists believe that prisoners should suffer, but they shouldn't lose their lives over a crime
• There is evidence that capital punishment doesn't deter crime
• The USA is one of the few democracies that retains capital punishment, and yet it has one of the highest murder rates among Western democracies
• When capital punishment was abolished in some states, the number of murders did not rise
• Certainty has a greater impact on deterrence than severity of punishment, capital punishment being the most severe
• Studies show that for most individuals convicted of a crime, short to moderate prison sentences may be a deterrent but longer prison terms produce only a limited deterrent effect
• Taking a prisoner's life doesn't help any situations and it's evident that it doesn't stop criminals from committing dangerous crimes
• It can also be argued that people may commit crimes to receive the death penalty as it is an easy way out for them, which again increases the level of crime in a city
• Amnesty International believes that capital punishment doesn't deter crime and there is no evidence that it's effective