The death penalty is the harshest form of punishment in the United States today. If the jury recommends the death penalty and the judge agrees, then the criminal will face some form of execution; lethal injection is the most common form used today. Still, capital punishment is a serious and difficult issue, and there are many sides to it. I will discuss some of the pros and cons of this form of punishment that is enforced on only the worse criminals.
One of the main pros of capital punishment is deterrence. Use of the death penalty as intended by law could actually reduce the number of violent murders by eliminating some of the repeat offenders thus being used as a system of justice, not just a method of deterrence. This is the main reason some advocates of capital punishment take their position. It is true that it may deter crime, but then again most murders are unplanned so people don’t usually take their time to think of the consequences before they commit such a crime.
Another pro is the safety of the public or modern society. Placing murderers and other serious criminals in prison might give them a chance for parole releasing them once again into the population. Using capital punishment eliminates such risk and puts the public at ease for the time being. Thus, the punishment would fit the crime and the victims’ family and society would be helped knowing one less murderer is out in the streets.

One final positive side of capital punishment is that it follows the principle of “an eye for an eye”. Why should someone who took a person’s life, be allowed to keep his/her own. Wouldn’t you enjoy knowing that the person the beat that living crap out of you, got the living crap beat out of him? The same applies for murderers, rapists, etc. They have caused a great deal of grief to the family and friends of the victim or victims and it seems like the only way justice could be served is for the criminal to die.
The are plenty of argument against the death penalty and one of them is the moral side. Critics argue that capital punishment is just a legal excuse for taking someone’s life, a right that applies to no one, except God. The methods by which executions are carried out can involve physical torture. "Capital punishment is a barbaric remnant of an uncivilized society. It is immoral in principle, and unfair and discriminatory in practice. It assures the execution of some innocent people. As a remedy for crime, it has no purpose and no effect (American Civil Liberties Union National Office 2-16-95)." Then again the accused didn’t have the right to take the victim’s life.
One of the more serious negative sides is the possibility of taking an innocent person’s life. See, once you kill someone you can’t bring him or her back to life. So you have to make sure you have the right person. More than 20 Americans have been wrongly executed and that one person too many. Most likely, many other cases of mistaken conviction and execution occurred and remain undocumented. A prisoner discovered to be innocent can be freed; but neither release nor compensation is possible for an innocent execution.


Some abolitionists of capital punishment believe that killing a convicted murderer is too “easy” of a punishment. By killing them they would not suffer one bit for the crime they committed. There is no doubt that someone can do more alive than dead. By keeping the prisoner alive they can maybe do something to partially “pay back” the victim’s family and society in general. Although this pay back can not take the pain away of a slain loved one, at least the prisoner is being put through hard and arduous labor for the foreseeable future.
In conclusion as I have explained capital punishment has a lot of positives and negative and I just touched up on a few. Personally I am a supporter of the death penalty. I think that the executions of murderers more than makes up for the rare death of an innocent prisoner. Even though I am a supporter I still agree with some of the negative sides of capital punishment, although not enough to change my mind on the issue.

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