Rationalization Of Death Penalty

In the United States, the issue of the death penalty is a highly debated topic. The death penalty is legal is 31 states, plus the United States government and the United States military. Many of those who support the death penalty claim that the killer no longer has the right to live because they took away someone else’s right to live. However, those who are pro-death penalty do not take into consideration that we are taking away the killer’s right to life through the actions resultant of the death penalty. They may refute that the convicted murderers forfeited their right to life when they killed someone. This leads to the following question: Under what authority do we as human beings get to decide when it is acceptable to end the life of another person? When there are other options, no one should have the power to …show more content…
The National Research Council stated that “studies claiming that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on murder rates are ‘fundamentally flawed’ and should not be used when making policy decisions” (“Facts about the Death Penalty”, 2016). If this is so, how can the death penalty be rationalized? According to the research, it is not beneficial in any way and therefore should be abolished as a practice. An outspoken protestor of the death penalty, John Paul Stevens, a retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice, “criticized the death penalty as a ‘wasteful enterprise’” (Sanger, 2016). He states that “continuing to prosecute capital cases [is] "unacceptable," saying the expense of capital trials is ‘particularly outrageous in light of the lack of evidence supporting the death penalty’s purported justifications…Citing the wrongful execution of Carlos Deluna, ‘a man who was unquestionably innocent of murder,’ as an example of the "ever-present potential for mistake,’ Stevens said, ‘it is time to put an end to irrevocable and mistaken state action of that kind’” (Sanger,