There are many issues about the right and wrong of having a death penalty. The main purpose of the death penalty is to have a punishment for extremely severe crimes that will help deter them. Punishment serves to make someone not repeat an activity and to, hopefully, deter the activity before it is done. This punishment does prevent a person from repeating his/her crime, but after punished they cannot actually regret having commited it. In regards to deterence, there are countries without a death penalty and they do not have higher severe crime rates.

Another aspect of the penalty is to give a sort of retribution to the victims of the crime. Is killing another person actually the best way to help the victims. Doesn't this cause more victims in the criminals family? Should they be forced to suffer a death in the family as well? Now they have mental anguish as the original victim's family has, and how are they to be helped? By killing the victims family, lawyers, judges, jury....I don't think that is appropriate. It would start a cycle that would kill everyone.

Many argue that killing is wrong in the eyes of god and the church, most any church, and for this reason there should not be a death penalty. This does hold some weight, even though it shouldn't. The penalty is a governmental punishment, and I fully believe in separation of church and state. Everyone has their own sets of morals which generally have a religious basis. They can then vote in governmental representatives with similar moral beliefs and that is how their beliefs can be used in the argument. Unfortunately, this is a very basic covering of church and state, and more on this can be discussed later in its own page. At this point a law based directly on religious writings would violate the separation of church and state and since I agree there should be no death penalty - no need to refute this point.

As stated, I believe the death penalty should be abolished.

1 - It does not serve as that much of a stronger deterent than other punishments.

2 - The criminal cannot fully repent or show remorse after the punishment is handed out.

3 - More victims are created in the criminals family when they had nothing to do with the crime.

4 - I feel there is something wrong with needing to kill the criminal to make the victims family feel better. Perhaps, there is another method for them to achieve closure.

5 - No person or group of people should be given the power to decide someone elses right to life.

6 - What if someone made a mistake.

I do believe we need a severe punishment to replace the death penalty though. This would be life in prison without the possibility of parole. Yes, that already exists, but I would modify it slightly. There would be a specific prison for only these criminals. They would be removed from society - no visitors, no internet, no mail, no cable TV, only a newspaper for basic understanding of the current world, no other outside contact. They would be "dead" to society.