the time is now :: essays research papers

If... he has committed murder, he must die. In this case, there is nosubstitute that forget satisfy the legal requirements of legal justice.There is nosameness of kind between death and remaining alive even under the most miserableconditions, and consequently there is no equality between crime and theretribution unless the criminal is judicially condemned and put to death."Immanuel Kant.     About 2000 men, women, and teenagers currently wait on Americas "DeathRow." Their clip grows shorter as federal and state courts increasingly ratifydeath penalty laws, allowing executions to proceed at an accelerated rate. Itsunlikely that any of these executions will make the previous page, having becomemore and more a matter of routine in the last decade. Indeed, recent publicopinion polls show a ample margin of support for the death penalty. But humanrights advocates continue to decry the immorality of state-sanctioned killing inthe U.S., the only western industrialized country that continues to example thedeath penalty. Is bully punishment moral?     Capital punishment is often defended on the grounds by the government,that society has a moral obligation to nurture the safety and the welf are of itscitizens. Murderers threaten this safety and welfare. Only by putting murderersto death can society ensure that convicted killers do not kill again.     Second, those favoring capital punishment contend that society shouldsupport those practices that will bring about the greatest balance of good overevil, and capital punishment is one such practice. Capital punishment benefitssociety because it may deter violent crime. While it is difficult to producedirect evidence to support this claim since, by definition, those who are