Capital Punishment
'Hot' religious topics Menu Capital punishment: All viewpoints on the death penalty. Execution methods, ancient and modern Cross, rifle, hangman's. Capital punishment is currently authorized in 31 states, by the federal government and the U.S. In recent years several states have abolished the death penalty, replacing it with a sentence of life imprisonment with no possibility for parole.
The execution, by hanging, of for his part in the 2003 Mumbai bombings invites us to revisit the vexed issue of capital punishment. Few topics incite such moral passion and controversy. Tech spec of noteburner m4v converter plus for mac free download. The on the death penalty. Despite a seemingly unambiguous commitment to non-violence (or “Ahimsa”) in both Hinduism and Buddhism, scholars within those traditions continue to debate the permissibility of lethal punishment. The Old Testament enjoins us to take an “eye for an eye” – the principle of lex talionis – while the New Testament exhorts us to “turn the other cheek”. And while Islam is generally regarded as compatible with the death penalty, the Qur'an’s emphasis on forgiveness suggests that Muslims should sometimes respond to evil with mercy, not retaliation. Wd my passport ultra.
While many European countries urge an ethic of rehabilitation in their criminal justice systems, many jurisdictions in the United States stand firmly in favour of capital punishment for serious crimes. Even a federal jury in Massachusetts, a liberal bastion, recently the death penalty to the sole surviving perpetrator of the Boston marathon bombing. And while the United Kingdom abandoned the death penalty in 1964 – the year of the last executions – nearly half of the British public a reintroduction of it (though that figure has been dropping steadily). We will not make progress in the public debate about the death penalty unless we realise that it is only one element in a much bigger controversy: about the point of punishment itself.
Capital Punishment History
As The Conversation invites us to rethink the death penalty over the next few weeks, we must not conduct this discussion in a vacuum. Before you ask yourself whether we should have the death penalty, consider: why hand out any punishments at all? Considering the three main families in the philosophy of punishment can help us organise our conversation. Retribution “Bad guys deserve to suffer.” This is a blunt slogan, but it captures the essence of a deeply familiar notion: people who have committed culpable wrongs deserve their lives to go worse as a result. 
Why do they deserve it? Perhaps because it’s not fair for the lives of wrongdoers to go well when the lives of the innocent have gone poorly – punishment levels the playing field.
Capital Punishment Definition
Whatever the reason, “retributivists” – those who believe in retribution – argue that the punishment of criminals is intrinsically valuable; it is valuable in and of itself, rather than valuable because of its good consequences (for example, preventing future crime). Even if punishing murderers and thieves had no effect on reducing the overall crime rate, retributivists tend to think it’s still the right thing to do. Retributivists also think that the severity of punishment should match the severity of the crime. So, just as it is wrong to over-punish someone (executing someone for stealing a pair of shoes), it can be wrong to under-punish someone (giving him a community service order for murder). If you are a retributivist, you might support the death penalty because you think that certain or all murderers (and perhaps other criminals) deserve to suffer death for their crimes. Depending on how you think about death, however, you might oppose the death penalty on the grounds that it is disproportionately harsh – perhaps you think that no matter what someone has done, she does not deserve to die for it. On the other hand you might oppose the death penalty on the grounds that it is disproportionately light.