Project#3_Death Penalty

Death Penalty

Death penalty, one of the oldest penalties in the world, based on the power by law to end prisoner’s live as a form of punishment, can also called capital crimes. Instead of specifically advocating against or in favor of the death penalty, our team looked at the matter from a neutral perspective and listed the following reasons to explain their ideas.(賴沛晴)

There are several main arguments commonly made in favor of the death penalty. One of the arguments is whether death penalty can make the society harmonious or not. The death penalty can prevent illegal acts from becoming an example of murder or terrorist acts committed by potential criminals. The death penalty has a deterrent effect on people who have criminal attempts and can effectively decrease the crime rate. The case of MRT Fruit Knives Massacre, the young man who called Tzeng jai caused four people dead, and twenty-four people injured. The offender has committed a crime because of a mental illness problem and has no repentance after being caught. Once the offender is kept in prison, then it means that there is still have a chance to appeal and be released. Such information may cause anxiety and panic to the public, but also make the families of the victim feel fury. To maintain the harmony of society, the criminal was sentenced to death. The death penalty not only has a deterrent effect, but also gives people a sense of security which can maintain the harmony of society. An important function of the death penalty is to isolate felons once and for all to prevent them from causing harm to society. In addition, proceeding from the rights of the victims, relative punishments are imposed on the offenders to compensate the victims.

Another argument is the expenses of death penalty and life imprisonment. The death penalty only needs to be executed once, therefore the cost of is lower than the life imprisonment and more humane. In the execute process, these criminals will be anesthetized before execution, which can alleviate their pain during the whole process. The process will be kept confidential, and the final meal can be chosen by the criminal themselves. On contrast, imprisonment may cause people to suffer from mental illness, and long-term torture of criminals is more painful than the death penalty. In addition, regarding the expenses for each death inmate, each prisoner’s food, extra and miscellaneous expenses will cost about two thousand NTW a month, which translates to about sixty-seven NTD a day. For a meal cost of sixty-seven NTD a day, a death penalty prisoner would have to spend millions of NTD for ten years. On the other hand, taking death inmates executed by shooting as an example, Zeng Siru spent ten months in custody for about twenty-four thousand NTD, nine months for Hong Mingcong spent about twenty-three thousand NTD. The expenditure of these expenses comes from the national treasury, which is the tax paid by the people. If the death penalty is abolished and there are more and more death row inmates, it may cause a serious burden on the national treasury. (劉珮伶)

There are two reasons why the death penalty should be abolished. The first reason is that “miscarriage of justice”, there has a miscarriage of justice happened many years ago. In the United States, the death penalty is 4.1% of injustice. This representative, one of the 25 condemned prisoners was unjustly sentenced. There is a famous injustice case in Taiwan, the Jiang Guoqing case. Jiang Guoqing was wrongly convicted and shot in 1997, and It took 14 years to find Jiang Guoqing’s innocence. Taiwan compensates the Jiang Guoqing’s family for 13,185,000 NT dollars, but no matter how much money, it can't return an innocent life.

Second, many people are likely to turn over a new leaf. We should give these people a chance to change. There is a volunteer who tutors prisoners throughout Taiwan. His name is Huang Mingzhen. He has the experience of tutor well-known death row prisoners on death row. He worked in this job for 30 years. He said, "There is no way to pretend to be true repentance." If we don't abolish the death penalty, those condemned will have no chance to repent. （林呈恩）

It is difficult for the people to evaluate the death penalty from an objective perspective. In addition to considering the moral aspect, the social welfare must also be considered. Based on multiple judgment, people hold their own views on controversial issues such as the death penalty, but it is difficult to say which ones are right and which are wrong.

References

Wikipedia, 死刑 (2021, May 29), Wikipedia

https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E6%AD%BB%E5%88%91

Wikipedia, 死刑存廢問題 (2021, May 29), Wikipedia

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AD%BB%E5%88%91%E5%AD%98%E5%BB%A2%E5%95%8F%E9%A1%8C

British Broadcasting Corporation, (2018, June 18)死刑存廢爭議：台灣殘忍兇殺案的反思, British Broadcasting Corporation

https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/trad/44549098

Want Want China Times Group, (2015, July 6)網路調查廢死原因., Want Want China Times Group

https://ivoting.chinatimes.com/20150607001147-261002

你不知道的歷史故事, (2021, June 4), 台灣死刑冤案比例, 你不知道的歷史故事

https://historyslice.com/keywords/台灣死刑冤案比例

Judicial Reform Foundation, （2021, June 4)江國慶案, Judicial Reform Foundation