Arguments of the death penalty

Essay by imaGe November 2006

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Is death the justification of a murder or are we merely subduing ourselves by performing the same heinous act? This argument had been debated for many decades and although some feel that death is the answer to a murder, there are others that find it completely barbaric. Through a careful analysis between Edward Koch's "Death and Justice" and David Bruck's "The Death Penalty", I believe Koch had the better argument in claiming that death is the justification of a murder. I feel that if someone were to kill another person, we have all rights to sentence them to a death penalty to guarantee such a horrific crime would not happen again.

If someone had the courage to take the life of another then he/she should have the courage to face the consequences. Although many believed that the death penalty is barbaric, I believe if it is not done, it would hinder America's goal in working toward a country that possesses the least crime rates.

In Koch's essay he compared cancer with the death penalty. "Today we are faced with the choice of letting the cancer spread with...methods that considered barbaric...But to give up...would certainly delay the discovery of an eventual cure." (Koch, paragraph 6) What Koch tried to convey to us is that certain methods of reducing cancer symptoms may be found barbaric but it is because of these methods we will find an eventual cure. This applies to the death penalty as well. Although someone may believe the death penalty is barbaric, they can still support it because if we create a society that does not tolerate the injustice of murder, incidents of murder will decrease.

In Bruck's argument he attacked back by stating that the death penalty was applied in a discriminatory manner through a man...