Death Penalty

"All human beings must not be subjected to torture or to cruel or inhuman treatment or punishment", states the Universal Bill of Rights. Convinced… that the killing of any human being is cruel, whether by an individual or by a government, further convinced… that the use of the death penalty is an inhuman practice which degrades the society that permits it. Deeply disturbed by the very real possibility of an innocent person wrongly being found guilty for a crime which carries the death penalty.

I would like to play a devil's advocate here, and I'm not entirely comfortable with the proposal that criminals or people committing heinous crimes should be accomodated with a punishment less than a death sentence. It is very crucial to honour such people with death sentences for the survival of our very own nation & to prevent it from certain crimes. According to me the grave nature of such crime can be justified by some grave punishments. Not giving death penalties to such people is like giving them a safe passage to commit more & more heinous crime.

Death is neither cruel nor unusual. We all must die sometime. If one has done a very bad act, the state has the right to mandate he die early. It takes bleeding hearts of so many people to ask for someones death. Only truly terrifying crimes are punished by death anyways. If anyone here thinks that a hanging or a firing squad is "cruel" or "unusual", you should really go and have a look at the crime scenes these terrorists leave behind them, you will learn an entirely new concept of "cruel" & "unusual". As dangerous animals are shot down, even dangerous human beings should be. Any other option is an invitation to disaster. Any criminal who has had a fair trial, and been found guilty by an overwhelming evidence and also if the crime is heinous enough, the right to live of that person can be taken away.

I don't say that drunk drivers should get a death penalty, that would be too extreme, but those terrorists who slay bus full of children on the grounds of religions, such monsters who can drag you from your own lawn on a Sunday morning and kill you in your garage would you favour such people. Do you find that one life so meaningful that you can overlook thousands of people killed by these monsters. I can not overlook such a distasteful sight. I cannot overlook the riots that took place in Mumbai. I cannot overlook the Mumbai & Delhi bomb blasts. I don't find it sensible to let more people die by helping such people get easy punishment. And I don't find the thousand deaths cheap infront of that one death.

I have no words to describe how I feel when people like Abu Salem are not given death penalty, inspite of rich proof against him, but that's the job of the law. As H.H. Munroe said "He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death".



Ragini (have taken comments from diff authors!)