THE DEATH PENALTY

Notion on capital punishment, its implementation worldwide and its controversial justifications.

The death penalty is to cause the death of a condemned by the legal system of a country, for having committed a crime that sanctioned by the legislation of the latter.

Thousands of people are executed each year by decision of the courts. Individuals die in the hands of the repressive power of the state that punishes, through a variety of methods such as lethal injection, electrocution, hanging, beheading, stoning, the gas chamber, the crucifixion, the strangulation, the fire, the lingchi, poison gas, the garrote, shooting, drowning, bleeding, dismemberment, impalement, poisoning, etc.

While it is true that the number of human executions has decreased considerably throughout the world, the death penalty remains in force in ninety-three (93) countries; China being the country where as many executions (more than 3,000 executions per year) are performed, and –according to data from the 2014– follow him: Iran (721 executions), Saudi Arabia (87), Iraq (60), United States (35) and Palestine (27), among the most important figures of the NGO World Coalition Against the Death Penalty [1].

The justifications of the nations which impose the death penalty are as simple as frightening: that killing murderers is morally right, while such punishment has positive social consequences. This reflects a vindictive justice concept. Another argument is the deterrent effect on potential murderers [2].

Proponents of the death penalty argue that the right to life is conditional. If killing in self - defense disclaims responsibility to its author (must be some factual circumstances), likewise, those who deliberately take away another life renounce their own right to live and cannot whimper when the state charge them life in return. There is also another argument, economic: the United wasted too much money on keeping murderers in prison for decades.

Against the death penalty reveals that, historically –in many times and jurisdictions– countless innocent people were victims of erroneous judgments. How many times has been news that a person was imprisoned for years without deserving it? Imagine if you take off the life of a person by mistake, there is no any science capable of achieving resuscitation time.

On the other hand, the death penalty affects mostly the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. Needless to say that people located in higher social strata are not usually judged even persecuted, by several factors: they have the ability to access good lawyers, pressure whistleblowers crime, commit acts of bribery or bribery civil servants, etc.

Going to the other extreme, if society seems appropriate to take the life of a person guilty of a particular crime, one might ask whether it is likely that respect for life itself decreases inevitably, but could be a weakening of the social taboo against murder.

It is serious that the state apparatus will remove a person his life, either legal maximum of every person on the planet. But it is true that if the law of a country allows this punishment, and the person has been properly judged according to its procedural rules, i.e., having met each of the penal guarantees, nothing can be done in defense of the defendant to avoid the application of such punishment on him ("Dura lex sed lex", the law is hard but it is the law).

This was shimmers in Twelve Angry Men [3] (1957), a film in which is visible how the behavior and characteristics –about them personality– each juror influences the purposes of assessing guilt a defendant in the US for this jury not only is to settle on the guilt or innocence of a little man, nor on the effectiveness of the evidence produced by both the prosecution and defense, but the decision to remove the life of a person without first ensuring that no matter how right or wrong of the death penalty, there is no doubt about the guilt of the subject.

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[1] http://www.worldcoalition.org/es/worldwide-database.html

[2] There is a strictly technical discrepancy between “murderer” and a “killer” in the Argentinian criminal law. Both concepts point to a person who commits a homicide, but killer is someone who kills by price or promise of remuneration.

[3] 12 Angry Men; year 1957; director: Sidney Lumet.