lethal injection does not always proceed smoothly as planned. After witnessing an execution, Journalist Susan Blaustein said, "We have perfected the art of institutional killing to the degree that it has deadened our natural, quintessentially human response to death" (NCADP). Most people who observe an execution are mortified and disgusted. Society must insist that the law not encourage such violent crime. Especially when the government ceremoniously carries out the cruel execution of a prisoner. Even if the death penalty is useful it is still and example of the very brutality and violence that the death penalty is supposed to prevent. Such methods of human torture and killing is allowed by retentionists to be hidden in the system we all call justice. Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Godberg wrote, "the deliberate institutionalized taking of human life by the state is the greatest conceivable degradation of the dignity of the human personality" (Amnesty International). There are countless other reasons why the death penalty is not a reasonable answer to the problem of crime. The cost of an execution is a large reason why the death penalty should be abolished. Justice often insists that the death penalty is the suitable punishment for brutal crimes. It is also often argued that death is what murderers deserve, and that those who oppose the death penalty violate the "eye for an eye" principle or the ideal of making the punishment fit the crime. If this rule means that punishments are unsuitable unless they are like the crime, then the principle is unacceptable. Because such an ideal would mean that we must rape a rapist, kidnap those who kidnap, and inflict other degrading punishments on the convicted (Nathanson 133). We would have to betray traitors, and kill serial killers again and again, which is impossible to do. Since we cannot reasonably punish all crimes according to this ideal, it is irrational to impose execution a...
