THE DEATH PENALTY

We’re going to talk about the death penalty, which is also called Capital punishment or “execution”. we’ve chosen this topic because it’s an interesting and current topic for debate and at the same time a topic which carries controversy. Nowadays there are a lot of countries which have been prosecuting this law (for example Ecuador, Egypt, India, Iraq, Japan, Pakistan or the united states) whereas others have banned it ( Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy or the united kingdom.) it’s done in many ways, but the most common ones are, for example, execution, Decapitation, Electrocution, Gas chamber or letal injection. We haven’t got a radical position about being for or against the law because we think that it depends on the situation, so we’re going to give you some reasons for it and some reasons against it.

Supporters of this law say that the criminal has committed a really terrible crime, and instead of staying a lot of years in prison (maybe the rest of their lives) it would be better for them to be killed, and this way they don’t need to suffer so much. They also say that we wouldn’t pay so many taxes, because the government pays for maintaining the prisons, but the money comes from all of us. What’s more, normally the family of the victim wants justice to be done, and the best way to do justice is killing the person who has committed the crime. Finally they also explain that we should kill bad people in order to have a better world.

Opponents say that some prisons (for example Guantanamo) are in the worst conditions that you can imagine, and there, prisoners seem to be like animals (they are badly treated). Moreover, sometimes people are wrongly accused, they sometimes kill innocent people.

Another reason they give is because you’re killing a person too, you could also be accused of killing someone, and this would create an endless chain and everyone would die. Finally they say that even though the criminal has misbehaved you must think that everybody can make mistakes, we’re all human and people make mistakes, nobody is perfect.

To conclude, we want to give you our opinion. On the one hand Cristina would opt for defending the “against” position, because you’re killing a person, and for their family it would be really hard to accept their death. There are also organizations which are against this penalty, for example Amnesty International. On the other hand, Salomé would opt for defending the “for” position, because the criminal has committed a dreadful action and it will be better for him or her to be killed instead of suffering for a long time.

 

Salomé Mir and Cristina Melià. 2^nd Batxillerat B