Jesus Christ was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate for claiming to be the king of Jews. Without committing any homicides or any other crimes, Jesus was innocently crucified. The death penalty has been a method of punishment used by many countries to bring justice to hurting family members of murder victims. Some convicted murderers have received the death penalty as punishment for taking someone else’s life and to give closure to the victim’s family members. To some people, the death penalty is the ultimate punishment an offender can receive. The United States has been carrying out capital punishment since its early colonization. As the years passed, more people have accepted the death penalty as a form of punishment for …show more content…
Retribution can be seen as an eye for an eye, a life for a life or paying back one’s debt to society. If a person intentionally takes a person’s life away, then his life should be taken away as punishment for his crime. Society can agree as a whole that the view of punishment should fit the crime in accordance to the degree of the crime. Currently, we can infer the United States criminal courts use Iuliano’s third principle of retribution. Nonetheless, retribution may not always be the best solution to bring closure to a victim’s …show more content…
They claim that with this punishment people will think twice before committing the same crime. However, seeing so many recent shootings in the media, it seems that criminals are not afraid of the death penalty and proceed with their crimes. “Deterrence works by discouraging other people who observe how others are punished from committing their own crimes” (Iuliano, 1382). In other words, a person who knows the punishment of a murder will be less likely to commit a murder than a person who does not know the outcome of that crime. The deterrence effect will eventually be accepted nationwide if studies prove that the death penalty actually helps reduce the number of homicides nationwide and prevent future murderers from engaging in homicides. Nonetheless, Iuliano concluded that “many scholars have analyzed the deterrent effect of the death penalty, and the overwhelming majority of them have concluded that capital punishment does not deter crime” (Iuliano, 1383-1384). With this results, the government’s deterrence claim to use the death penalty can be viewed as an unnecessary immoral form of capital punishment. He concludes his review by adding that “lifers themselves state that death is far preferable to their current existence” (Iuliano, 1440). To many, giving the death penalty to a murderer may seem as a won victory. But, in reality, taking