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Unjust

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On whichever side of the scale you look, the death penalty is not just. On the one side, there is the possibility for error, whether truly accidental or intentional. Conversely, the death penalty is not nearly a stiff enough penalty for those who are guilty.

Not a stiff enough penalty? Well, what could possibly be worse than death? Humans are fiercely independent creatures, as a whole, and many prefer death to lifelong confinement. Why, then, do we give a greater penalty (life imprisonment) to lesser crimes? In the United States, a crime has to be particularly heinous before it will incur the dreaded death sentence. In effect, this is rewarding even more heinous behavior, in that someone who has already committed a crime that will get them life in prison may be tempted to compound their crime in order to receive death.

Now let's consider the criminal and the method of death. Great pains are taken to ensure that those "euthanized" by the government are killed quickly and humanely. Extensive research has gone into various methods of execution, attempting to determine which are fast, painless, and the least traumatic for the person being executed. Why are such courtesies afforded them? These are ruthless criminals. Why should a serial killer who rapes and butchers his victims be given a quiet, painless, least-traumatic death? This does not sound like justice.

Finally, there are those who should never have been on death row in the first place. Investigators make mistakes, forensic labs are a part of very recent history, and many cases can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that can not be proven beyond ANY doubt. If the government is to have the power to legally kill people, wouldn't it be nice to know that they only ever kill the people who are supposed to be killed? That would be a wonderful thing to know, but the evidence is in fact to the contrary. Due to recent advances in investigative technology, over 100 people have been found to have been given the death penalty unjustly.

Throughout history, death has been considered the ultimate in effective methods of ridding oneself of political opponents or satisfying a grudge. If a person gets on the wrong side of certain people, their chances of being convicted of a capital offense just went up significantly. To assume that this kind of thing doesn't happen anymore in our new, improved, more "civilized" governments would be folly. At any rate, a person's life should never hang on the tenuous thread of assumption.

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