Capital Punishment Essay: Murder Is Wrong

There are not many absolute truths in the world. Almost every point can be argued and justified. But if there is one truth universally recognized, one truth upon which societies the world over have been based on, it is that murder is wrong. The willful termination of a life is immoral. If we as a society accept that to be true, how then can we condone the death penalty? How is government sanctioned murder a moral option? The legal system is not fool proof, nothing man-made is. How then can we claim that an imperfect court of law, pervious to human error and persuasion, has the power to lay down the most perfectly irreversible solution of them all: death. Even after the appellate courts have been exhausted, it is possible for an innocent person to be convicted of a crime they did not do. If there is even that small possibility, how can we, in all good conscious, make it legal to put someone to
Well, here is a prime example of a moralistic fallacy: Capital punishment should keep more people from committing crime, therefore, it will. The suggestion that something is simply because it should is wrong, it is wrong morally, it is wrong. The death penalty in a nutshell: If you kill someone, you will be killed because killing is wrong. The hypocrisy is so thick, a child could detect it. Do as I say, not as I do. “In an attempt to bring executions in line with our evolving standards of decency, we have adopted increasingly less painful methods of execution. (Stevens) As we progress as a society, we have tried to conform the death penalty to make it more palatable, more in line with a modern world view, but the truth is, lethal injection and stoning both have the same endgame. Instead of trying to find more humane ways of killing, we could make the truly evolved step toward enlightenment as a society by abolishing capital punishment. As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world