The death penalty is the definition of a "final answer" since there is certainly no going back once the person has been executed. However, is it really fair and just to take the lives of other human beings for the sake of retributive justice? Absolutely. A life sentence is a sentence to be held in the less than pristine environment of prison until you die, but is that really better than executing the person? With a life sentence, you allow the criminal to linger in a prison cell for an unknown number of years to come. It is not as though the person is going to be of much use to anyone as he or she rots away in a cell as retribution for the heinous acts that the individual committed that landed them in prison with a life sentence in the first place. Instead of having the person suffer in prison for the rest of his or her life, it seems like the more merciful approach would be to put the individual out of his or her misery, unless of course the goal is to make the person suffer for as long as possible.
But wait, what about people that have committed violent crimes but do not have life sentences? Should we try to rehabilitate these people and then simply release them once they have been rehabilitated? The problem with this lies in there being no sure-fire way to determine if someone has truly been rehabilitated. However, the current system addresses the potential for a criminal to have been rehabilitated with the parole system. On another note, I believe that there are people who cannot be rehabilitated. These people should be executed since they will always be menaces to society and would only once again harm other people if they were ever released back into society. These individuals need to be executed, but the obvious issue with this is how you would determine that a particular person cannot be rehabilitated.
In the case of anyone placed in solitary confinement for a prolonged period of time, it certainly seems as though death would be preferable. Why suffer the lonely horror of an extended stay in solitary confinement when you could have your life ended relatively quickly with far less suffering involved? It seems like it would be more ethical than making someone suffer through that seemingly eternal solitude. In this case, execution would be a mercy, especially since there is nothing but suffering left for them here on Earth, but who knows what waits for them after their souls are freed from their bodies?
3 comments:
I agree with you on the fact that execution is more merciful than forcing people to rot away in a cell with no rights or freedom; however, isn't that why they should go to jail? The point of a judge issuing a life sentence is for the criminal to be forced to live with the results and consequences of their actions instead of allowing them the simple escape of death. I guess I only half-agree with you.
I agree with you when you said solitary is the worse of the two options. What would you say about people who are mentally ill who commit violent crimes and which cannot be rehabilitated? Is the death penalty on the table at all for them? Or is life in an institution the just thing.
As a response to Ariana, I have no issue with having scum rot in jail instead of giving them a mercy execution. However, I was writing from a more "ethical" approach.
As a response to Ben, the cases of mentally ill people would have to judged based on the individual due to the variables of the particular mental illness along with the history that the person has with it as well as a psych evaluation. If we're saying that we have determined that it is impossible for the individual with the mental illness to be rehabilitated from said mental illness in any significant way, it still seems like they should be held in an asylum since it is most likely not their fault that they have such a severe mental illness. However, this does bring up the question of whether the person's family should be able to decide to have the individual executed if the individual is not in a rational state of mind for an extended period of time.It would be like a more direct way of taking someone off of life support.
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