Are you shocked when you see a condemned criminal being shot? Some people think capital punishment is necessary to prevent violent crimes, while others think it’s a cruel punishment that should be abolished instantaneously. I personally think that capital punishment should be abolished because no one should have the power to take away another’s life, and capital punishment does not make any positive effect, as well as it takes away criminals’ opportunities to repent and rehabilitate.
First and foremost, no one should have the power to take away another’s life. Ronald Dworkin, an illustrious philosopher and jurist, once asserted that “human’s life is internally sacred and inviolable.” That is because right to life is the most basic right of human beings, is a person right from birth. If you deprive a person’s life, you deprive his/her everything. Undoubtedly, it is a catastrophic violation of humanity and human rights. Therefore, murder is the most antihuman crime in the world. However, capital punishment is nothing different from murder except that its executor is the state, instead of individuals. Punishing a murderer by murdering him/her is punishing a crime by the same crime! A state is composed of people, if people can not take away another’s life, how come the state can? It’s fallacious and ridiculous! In general, people’s lives are unalienable.
In the second place, capital punishment does not make any positive effect. For example, families of victims in murder cases will not feel better after the murderer’s death, because their family member, their love has gone forever. However, the murderer’s families will be plunged into great grief, which can be considered as another kind of punishment. That is utterly unfair because the murderer’s families are innocent, they should not be punished as well. Furthermore, if capital punishment is actually capable to hold the crime rate low, then after the abolishment, the crime rate should suddenly shoot up. Nevertheless, the fact is the abolishment of the capital punishment did not increase the crime rate. According to The Death Penalty , which is written by Roger Hood, after abolishing the capital punishment, the crime rate of Canada decreased from 309 per 100,000 residents in 1975 to 241 per 100,000 residents in 1980, this trend continued, in 2003, the crime rate of Canada was 173 per 100,000 residents. All in all, capital punishment has no positive effects.
Thirdly, capital punishment takes away criminals’ opportunities to repent and rehabilitate, that is because the criminal has already been killed. For instance, in China, on June 7th, 2011, an undergraduate called Yao Jiaxin was executed to death because he killed a woman in a car accident. The whole course was he ran down and injured a restaurant waitress, Zhang Miao, while driving, then got out of his car and stabbed her to death when he saw her memorizing his license plate number. Yao Jiaxin was only a 21-year-old man, he may have just acted on impulse, there should be an opportunity for him to repent and introspect. Nonetheless, the only option for him was to die. Furthermore, when a dog is driven into a corner, it will plunge into great fear and become frantic. So do people. For example, when a serial killer realizes that he is going to be sentenced to the capital punishment, he will walk to the extremity and kill more people, because he knows that there is no way for him to reform, the only way is to die. In addition, if the unjust case occurs, there will be no way to remedy, because the suspect has already been killed. To sum up, capital punishment takes away people’s opportunities to break away from evil ways and return to the normal life.
To conclude, for the issue that whether or not the capital punishment should be abolished, since nobody has the power to judge other people’s life and death, and capital punishment is completely futile, also it grabs criminals’ chances to reform, therefore, capital punishment should be abolished right away!