In the past few years, capital punishment has become a national issue in the United States. Many people have questioned the morality of the government executing human beings, while others have claimed that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent and should be discontinued. Both of these criticisms, however, fall far wide of the mark. Capital punishment is a vital component of our country's criminal justice system for three main reasons: it is a just way to punish those who do wrong in order to restore the balance to a just society, it is the only way to ensure that societal predators never harm innocents again by rendering them utterly incapable of doing harm, and, most importantly, it has a significant deterrent effect on those who would commit murder but do not out of fear of being executed. Additionally, we will show that those who argue that innocents are being put to death by the government are grossly misrepresenting the facts in order to advance their arguments. The bottom line is that the death penalty, properly administered in order to ensure that it is applied justly, is an essential component of America's criminal justice system. Abandoning it would be foolhardy at best and dangerous at worst.
The first and most obvious argument for the death penalty involves the fact that the murder of an innocent is never deserved. Those who prey on unsuspecting members of society and murder innocent men, women, or children have earned their punishment through the pain and suffering they have imposed on their victims and their families. Execution, of course, can never fully recompense the victims and their families because nothing can replace the innocent life that has been lost (Sharp).
Is capital punishment a form of justice? "Justice is giving each what is due to him. So fundamental is the duty of public authority to requite good and evil in deeds that natural law philosophers consider it the paramount f...