Desire of Revenge Blinds Human to Humanity and Justice

Desire of revenge blinds human to humanity and justice.

It has been almost three years since the horrible tragedy where hundreds people were killed. They were celebrating and participating in an annual event in Boston, The Boston Marathon, the world’s oldest annual marathon. Thousands of participants gathered there, and supported each other. They engaged with each other and dissolved in the euphoria. That cheerful day turned out to be tragic when two explosions went off. Two Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev (26) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (19) were behind this. Tamerlan died following a shootout with law enforcement, three days after the tragedy while his young brother got caught four days later. Finally, he was given capital punishment.

Most of us certainly agree that murder is an unforgivable felony . There is no reason killing fellow human beings is justified ; except, for self-protection if it’s unavoidable. But, how about killing for killing ? Is it appropriate to kill somebody even though he appallingly killed more than one innocent person ? What result does it bring or how does it impact society, ? Does the death punishment give a better solution or result ? No, I believe that death penalty is not the best solution because it does not bring much positive impact to society.

From here dozens of questions appear, two opposing opinion arise. Pro and Cons arguing about legalizing death penalty, should Tsarnaev had been given death penalty for justice and equality of what he had done or kept alive for human value ? Did he deserve the punishment ? There are some reason why people agree with the death penalty.

Many think that Tsarnaev should be given an equal sentence wich They believe is death. Simply, they assume what he did was immoral and for justice and equality he should be ‘killed’ too for having killed others before. They also assume that all people do not want to die, so any person would put the sentence as consideration before they committed crime and it would protect citizens from future murderers. Of course some might believe that Tsarnaev should have been given the death penalty since what he did was really savage and immoral. Although I admit that what he did is cruel and brutal, I still maintain my opinion that the death penalty is not the best solution. Perhaps some of us just can not control our momentary emotions ; therefore, we do not necessarily need to put him on death row. If we look carefully, there are many reasons not to give him the death penalty.

First, let’s focus on the expense of killing someone on death row. We might merely deduce that executing one costs less than maintaining him and his life need for along his life. But in fact, death row costs more than life in prison. Capital punishment takes many  process and spends long time and lot of money. A study in California revealed that since 1978, California’s system has cost the state’s taxpayers $4 billion more than a system that has life in prison without the possibility of parole (‘LWOP’). The study considered pre-trial and trial costs, costs of automatic appeals and state habeas corpus petitions, costs of federal habeas corpus appeals, and costs of incarceration on death row. The authors also calculated that, if the Governor commuted the sentences of those remaining on death row to life without parole, it would result in an immediate savings of $170 million per year, with a savings of $5 billion over the next 20 years.  (Alarcon & Mitchell, 2011).

As i mentioned before, many believe that with death penalty brings a huge impact to society especially into public safety from acts of terrorism. With the death penalty, killing-intention of people who potentially become murderers would be affected and discouraged. While in the real fact, according to a report that was released in April 2012 by National Research Council of the National Academies, there is no credible studies that asserted capital punishment deters crime and act of terrorism. It proved that studies claiming a deterrent effect on murder rates from the death penalty are fundamentally flawed. The report concluded: “The committee concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates. In my opinion, death penalty would not affect their intention so much, even in some cases it could ‘encourage’ them. For instance, seeking the death penalty against Tsarnaev, and imposing it if he were to be convicted, would turn him into a martyr. His execution might well incite other acts of terrorism. Those seeking paradise through martyrdom would see him as a role model.