Death Sentence or Capital Punishment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Death Sentence or Capital Punishment - Essay Example After watching the film, Dead Man Walking and reading some of Sister Helen Prejean, I believe that the mode of punishment is equally inhumane and has no place in the modern society as the discussion below portrays. The film introduces Mathew Poncelet, who has been in prison for six years as he awaits execution by lethal injection for killing a couple. His life and experiences while on death row coupled with the actual execution portray the inhumane nature of the crime. Firstly, capital punishment is a form of retribution. Killing Poncelet for killing the couple is a form of vengeance engineered by the state. The process devalues human life and may not always have any moral benefits to the society. People do not learn that killing is a vice since the state kills such offenders. Instead, the punishment shows the state using its laws to carry out an execution of its citizens. Furthermore, vengeance does not always gratify the families of the victims who continue living with the loss. Ad ditionally, the process is traumatizing. Just as shown in the film, the process of killing a convict is slow and tedious. The convicts stay on death row for years as they await their execution. Mathew Poncelet in the film stays in prison for six years as he awaits the process. The courts in the United States simply sentence a convict to death but never specify the date of the actual execution. Such court rulings are the height of torture and inhumane treatment of the convicts. Poncelet, for example, lives every day anticipating the execution. Six years is always a sufficient punishment for some other crimes in the country. As such, the process is like double punishment since the convicts live in solitary for long. Within the period, some lose their sanity as they anticipate the penalty. Death penalty prolongs the agony of both the victims’ families and that of the convict. Victims deserve effective and equally timely justice.