Essays

1-Death Penalty

Many states and countries around the world still perform death penalty. As a pacifist I can not understand why. So, I googled "death penalty" and what others thought of it to draw my own conclusions from that. I found almost twice as many argumants to ban death penalty than in favor of it. So, why ban death penalty and why not?

If I had to describe death penalty in one sentence, the first one to come to my mind would be: "We kill people who kill people because killing people is bad." This statement does not make any kind of sense to me.
Secondly, there is a number of basic human rights: Freedom, safety and life. And obviously death penalty violates all of the above.
Furthermore, there is no guarantee that someone is really guilty or at least it is hard to find such precise evidence. Evidence might be wrong, say sabotaged or placed to cover the real criminal. We cannot bring back someone once they were executed.
Finally, who gets to decide who lives or dies? Where do we, as a society, draw the line tfrom which on a criminals live is no longer worthy of protection? No doubt this person did something wrong, that is not what I am saying, but so do children and literally everybody on earth. We all have flaws, all of us make mistakes. What offence would be so bad it justifies death penalty.

On the other hand, as much as death penalty cannot be undone, no money in the world may ever bring back the time someone innocently spent in prison either. And you may not be able to undo a performed death sentence but the victim of a murder cannot be brought back to live either.