The Death Penalty

Paper Summary:

The paper states that the difficulty with the debate over the death penalty often adds up to one in which people are arguing about a certain approach to an abstract ethical system and the experiential reality of those involved in and connected to a death-penalty case, which makes the entire issue suffused with an even more impressive and murky layer of complexity than if it were merely an issue of conflicting theories of jurisprudence. The paper points out that, in all of the issues surrounding the death penalty, it is strange how often the issue focuses on the rights of the killer and how infrequently the feelings and thoughts of the victim's family are considered in any real depth. The paper concludes that the United States has come to hold an increasingly unique stance in relation to the death penalty, as it is one of the few countries that practices capital punishment and, certainly, the one that practices it with the greatest frequency.

From the Paper:

"Indeed, some critics claim that they the argument that families witnessing the execution of death penalty subjects is in fact not beneficial in the least, and that, rather than helping to deal with the stress, it is just as likely to cause damaging psychological effects that may create long-term problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Indeed, one critic of this process conducted a study of 21 journalists who were allowed to witness a public execution in 1994 and discovered that it had severely damaging results on their psyches."

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