Death Penalty: Speech

Introduction

Death penalty also known as capital punishment is a form of punishment that is carried out by the judicial system and it entails killing the offender. Not all crimes can result in death penalty such that killing of an offender is limited to capital crimes. Over the years, most of the societies have established ways of abolishing this form of punishment while in other cases it is restricted to wartime where offenders of capital offences are beheaded. The individual who carries out the killings is referred to as an executioner and identity is often concealed from the public due to the nature of work. This form of punishment ahs been subject to various cultural and religious societies hence making it a topic of controversies based on human rights violations. Consequently, the world’s most populous countries such as China, Indonesian and the United States are very much unlikely to abandon death penalty.

Discussion

Offences which call for death penalty

Capital crimes such as espionage, treason and murder are punished through killing of the criminal while in some countries sexual crimes are wont to death penalty. Sexual crimes include sodomy, incest, rape and adultery while certain religions such as Islam call for death penalties for crimes like apostasy. Some cultures which condemn child trafficking impose capital punishment for those caught in the act or those involved in the business. Similarly, cowardice, insubordination and mutiny in the military are often regarded as severe crime and death is the ultimate punishment (Schabas, 2002).

Methods of death penalty punishment

The United States and the Philippines have popularized the electric chair form of capital punishment which is portrayed by electrocuting a criminal while seated. Various high voltage electrodes are used to transmit current into the body and eventually the internal organs are damaged. Consequently, lethal injections are used to incapacitate the criminal such that they are put to sleep first before the lethal chemical slowly destroys their internal organs (Schabas, 2002).

China used distinct ways of carrying out the death penalty with one of the ways being strangulation. Strangulation involves cutting off the flow of air in an individual such that increased pressure on the criminals throat reduces their ability to breath and thus they collapse hence indicating their death. Consequently, criminal offences which were not overly severe were punished through strangulation and they include opening a coffin or kidnapping a person with intent of selling them to slavery (Benn, 2002).

The other method is execution by shooting where by one executioner or a group of armed executioners are challenged to shoot down at the individual in a close range. In most cases, the close range shot is often unexpected such that the criminal is not aware of the exact timing when the shot is expected. A more severe death penalty for mutineers and those convicted of serious crimes include slow slicing where the executioner(s) chopped off a thousand pieces of flesh from the criminal at certain intervals after which he/she was left to bleed to death (Schabas, 2002).

Global distribution of death penalty

By the year 1977, more than 16 countries around the world had abolished death penalties among their criminal punishment options. In a recent survey in 2010 by Amnesty International, over 95 countries have so far abolished death penalties while quite a substantial number of the countries had not used this form of punishment in the last ten years. However, more than 58 countries most of them in the west have not diverted their laws to eliminate this capital punishment. The Amnesty International also identified an emerging trend where countries such as China which are known to carry out varying lengths of capital punishment have failed too publish any information regarding the number of executions carried out per year (Benn, 2002).

Impact of death penalty in fighting crime

Countries such as the United States which have embraced death penalty fully are more prone to elevated levels of crime and capital offences. Such countries have exhibited more murder, rape, treason and kidnapping rates than countries which have abolished death penalty. Consequently, death penalty should be completely abolished as it has failed to deter the initial intent of its introduction (Schabas, 2002).

Conclusion

To sum up the issue of death penalty among the worlds key countries, the intended impact of introducing death penalty has failed incredibly. Consequently, the means of carrying out the killings are inhuman as portrayed by the various methods through which death is attained. Similarly, some of the criminal offences which warrant a death penalty can be attributed to unstable state of mind for the offender hence correctional punishment should be sought other than capital punishment.

Keywords

Death penalty

Capital punishment

Executioner

Criminal

Offence

Amnesty International

Human rights

Society and culture

References

Benn, C. (2002). China‘s Golden Age: Everyday Life in the Tang Dynasty. Oxford University

Schabas, W. (2002). The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law. Cambridge University Press.