Argumentation Position Paper. Pro Death Penalty

Death penalty or capital punishment is one of the most controversial and discussed issue in the criminal justice system today. Every coin has two sides. The only thing that matters is what is more important. I'd like to talk about the importance of retaining death penalty.

In a common sense, human being is fearful of death. Death penalty serves a very important deterrent to crime. Pre-mediated murderers would definitely think twice before committing ruthless crimes. Some argue that criminals do not fear death. But in fact, when a criminal is held at gunpoint, majority complies. If criminals did not fear death, then how police officers manage to arrest them without killing them. Fear is not a conscious decision or a thought process. It's a human instinct. They fear for their lives just as much as any law abiding citizens do. A series studies conducted in the last decade indicate that death penalty is a deterrent to murder. Professor Naci Mocan has found "a statistically significant relationship between executions, pardons and homicide. Specifically each additional execution reduces homicides by 5 to 6, and three additional pardons (commutations) generate 1 to 1.5 additional murders." In a more recent study conducted by Professor Joanna M. Shepherd found that "each execution results, on average, in five fewer murders. Longer waits on death row reduce the deterrent effect. Therefore, recent legislation to shorten the time prior to execution should increase deterrence and thus save more innocent lives. Moratoriums and other delays should put more innocents at risk. In addition, capital punishment deters all kinds of murders, including crimes of passion and murders by intimates. Murders of both blacks and whites decrease after executions." Death Penalty not only has deterrent effect on murder but also has significant effect on other punishments. According to Professor Liu: "Abolishing the death penalty not only gets rid of a valuable deterrent, it also decreases the deterrent effect of other punishments. The deterrent effects of the certainty and severity of punishments on murder are greater in retentionist (death penalty) states than in abolition (non-death penalty) states."

Some would argue that life imprisonment without parole could achieve the same purpose. But even in supermax facilities, murder criminals commit on other inmates and guards happens frequently. And also there is a chance that an offender could escape in a lifelong sentence, but no one can escape death. In an unlikely but possible scenario, where a prisoner somehow managed to escape the confinement only to commit another crime. According to Murderpedia.org "Dawud Mu'Min who was serving a 48-year sentence for the 1973 murder of a cab driver when he escaped a road work gang and stabbed to death a storekeeper named Gadys Nopwasky in a 1988 robbery that netted $4.00." This is why there is no better substitute for death penalty. Only remove the murderers forever can prevent them from killing again and save the lives of innocent. There is no doubt that in some cases where a criminal can change. But it makes no sense to put innocent