Capital Punishment

Capital punishment is a sensible topic that has been debated for years, because it involves taking someone’s life. There are some reasons in favour and against. This is shown in some movies and books, for example “The life of David Gale” and “the case for the defence”.

    Some of the people who are in favour of it justify it through the theory of retribution: “An eye for an eye”, so if someone does something that is equal to death or worse he/she has to be equally. Also, they think that since the criminal have killed someone, they could commit the crime again. So by killing them they will remove the chance of happening again. As well as that if people knew they would die when they break the law, they wouldn’t do it, so they will try to avoid committing a crime or from doing it again.

But on the other hand some people believe the opposite, they have the idea that capital punishment is wrong and there are better solutions. Other solutions could be life sentence to prison, rehabilitation, etc. Also if you killed someone because the person has killed you would be committing the same crime, so it would be contradictory. In addition if they get death penalty they will have no chance of redeeming themselves, or proving that they were really innocent.

The movie “The life of David Gale” is about this topic, it is about a man that was accused of killing and raping a woman, and was sentenced to death penalty. But he was accused wrong and was innocent, so it was too late. This movie shows one of the flaws of capital punishment, and how the death of an innocent man could have been prevented. On the other hand there is a story “The case for the defence” where a man is accused of killing a woman in was sent to court, if he was guilty he would be punished with capital punishment. But the eyewitnesses couldn’t tell if it was of him or his twin, so he was declared innocent and set free. Showing if he was killed and that because of the lack of evidence it could have been wrong.

In conclusion there are a lot of reasons to be against or in favor of capital punishment, and it is a difficult topic that has been discussed for a long time. In my opinion, capital punishment shouldn’t be an options of punishment, because killing is not the solution, it is just avoiding the problem. Also is not well backed up, for example “The theory of retribution” states that we should became criminals to punish the criminal. From a moral and religious point of view applying the capital punishment turns us the same level as the criminals. So I am more convinced with the ideas that are not in favour of capital punishment.