death penalty is cruel, inhumane, and degrading, most proponents arguethat murder is too. In fact, some retentionists consider execution to be more humane than lifeimprisonment because it is quick and instantaneous. Those in support of capital punishment feelthat making the prisoner suffer by rotting in jail for the rest of his life is more torturous andinhumane than execution. Cook 3To sum up the basic views of the proponents, imprisonment is simply not a sufficient safeguardagainst the future actions of criminals because it offers the possibility of escape and release onparole. We think that some criminals must be made to pay for their crimes with their lives, andwe think that we, the survivors of the world they violated, may legitimately extract that paymentbecause we, too, are their victims (Bedau 317). Even though the retentionists pose some interesting arguments, I myself feel that theabolitionist perspective contains much stronger backing and more reasons for opposition, thefirst of which is that the death penalty is wrong morally because it is the cruel and inhumanetaking of a human life. The methods by which executions are carried out can involve physicaltorture. Electrocution has on occasion caused extensive burns and needed more than oneapplication of electric current to kill the condemned (Amnesty 6). To many opponents, capitalpunishment is a substitution for legally killing people and no one, not even the State, has theauthority to play God.Contrary to popular belief, the death penalty does not act as a impediment crime. Expert after expert and study have emphasized and emphasized the lack of correlation betweenthe threat of the death penalty and the occurrence of violent crime (Meador 69). Isaac Ehrlichsstudy on the impediment effect of capital punishment in America reveals this. It spanstwenty-five years, 1957-1982, and shows that in the first year of the study was conducted therewere 8,060 murders in 1957 an...
