ists, life in prison without perol is viewed as atougher punishment, than the contrarily swift and painless killing by legalsentence. A British philosopher John Stuart Mill once remarked: Whatcomparison can there be in point of severity, between consigning a manto the short pang of a rapid death, and immuring him in a living tomb,there to linger in what may be a long life in the hardest mostmonotonous toil, without any alleviation or rewards-- debarred from allpleasant sights and sounds, and cut off from all earthly hope, except aslight mitigation of bodily restraint, or a small improvement of diet?(Stewart 39). The retentionist view of the morals of capital punishment isstraight forward. They are concerned with the sanctity of the victims liferather than that of the murderers. Theodore Roosevelt once spoke outon this subject when he was a colonel in the Spanish-Mexican War,scoffed at the idea that a criminals life was too precious to destroy. Hedeclared: Inasmuch as, without hesitation, I have again and again sentgood and gallant and upright men to die, it seems to me the height offolly both, mischevious and mawkish to contend that criminals who havedeserved death should nevertheless be allowed to shirk it. No brave andgood man can properly shirk death and no criminal who has earned deathshould be allowed to shirk it (Kronenwetter 131). Again, thisstrengthens the argument that capital punishment doesnt cheapen life,but affirms its worth.What do the numbers say? In a 1991 survey conducted by theGallup Poll, out of 217 surveys, sixteen percent of those who opposedthe death penalty said it was because of morality. However, out thatsame sixteen percent, eighty percent of them said the punishment shouldbe left up to God. In contrast, only nine percent of 700 who supported itsaid it was to uphold morals. Out of that same nine percent, all of themsaid the reason they supported was to maintain and satisfy justice or alife for a li...
