Crime is a stigma on the fabric of society. It is not a new problem, as it was also prevalent in ancient times. To combat it, oftentimes, the government law officials and other law authorities impose some kind of laws and punishments. Punishment depends upon the level of crime: for petty crimes, criminals get short and soft punishments, whereas for heinous crimes they may get long time imprisonment or death. Death penalty is often a controversial issue. Some people think that it is the only way to deter the crime but the people who oppose death penalty think that it is against humanity and its retribution. Ralph Dellapiana, in his article "Should We Put Death Penalty on the Chopping Block" states that "the top five countries in executions in 2008 were China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and United States. On the other hand, 135 civilized countries in the world have abolished the death penalty" (25). There are also religious viewpoints for killing people like this. Beside this, some people think it is against the human rights and criminals must be punished. Moreover, James P. Gray, in his article "Facing Fact on Death Penalty", expresses that .
On the other hand, there has been a historical and even biblical rationale that the proper penalty for wrongly taking the life of another is to forfeit one's own life. On the other hand, it is hard to justify our country (United States) being the world's champion of human rights if it is so at odds with much of the rest of the world on issue of capital punishment" (258).
But if we think more deeply about it, we can actually understand the phenomena of death penalty. For instance, if someone kills another person for whatever reason, and in response to that we kill that person in the name of law, it seems like we are emerging the feeling of retribution in our society. Death penalty is costlier than other punishments, ineffective, and fundamentally immoral.
