Capital Punishment

The death penalty has killed thousands of Americans since its inception in 1776. It has been used as the ultimate punishment, and given to the worst criminals we catch.
From the beginning, there has been controversy about the death penalty, but it’s been most prominent in the last 40 years since the 60s.The Conservatives that maintain it have defenses, which hold water with many weekend patriots. A punishment, according to them, is meant as a deterrent of future inappropriate activity. To kill a person accomplishes this goal and more, ensuring that the person will never harm anyone else again. This argument does make sense from a logical stand point, but, to be properly empirical one must factor in repercussions on a scale larger than crime prevention.

Objectors have various arguments, but all point out the obvious paradox capital punishment poses. Killing a criminal is saying that two wrongs make a right. We thought our politicians mothers, especially the Supreme Court’s, taught them otherwise. By slaying the sinner, we are lowering ourselves to his level, which according to us is low enough to merit death. This leads us to reason that the only fair way to maintain capital punishment is to have it given to those who have lowered themselves by giving it, and give it to those who gave it to those who gave, etc. This chain of death as the only solution is a manifestation of the hypocrisy of the death penalty. Capital punishment is like an equation for a line that, when graphed, illustrates a square.