Death Penalty in the united States Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Death Penalty in the united States - Essay Example Capital punishment is essential in the legal system because punishment should be proportioned to the evil of the offense. Retribution becomes a moral obligation. The offender is to be killed by the state only because he brings death upon himself; but this dead man with a beating heart is to be treated decently right up to the point of gentle termination because he also remains a person, a rational agent of free will. Murderers had previously agreed to submit to the rule of civil authority and partake of its privileges and its responsibilities by engaging with society. Those who violate the laws have broken a trust with the citizenry, which, by exacting a penalty, seeks compensation for an act considered an affront to the purpose for which submission to civil authority was commenced (Bigel 46). The very high ratio of condemned prisoners to executions in many states-200 to 1 rather than the 40 to 1 in many northern jurisdictions- has meant that there is no longer a clear and proximate relationship between death sentences and executions. More than seven out of ten respondents regard the removal of the threat that "the killer might kill again" as an important benefit of the death penalty, but 68 percent regret that the current system results in "mistaken executions." More than six of ten respondents are concerned about the jurisdictional differences in death sentences and executions, but six of ten also think the system provides "closure" (Colson 27). This set of profoundly mixed feelings about the death penalty suggests that public responses to death penalty surveys might vary importantly by the context and the wording of questions. By contrast, the abolitionists see the impact of executions as a statement of pervasive importance about the relationship between the government and the individual. Abolitionists in the United States view capital punishment as a fundamental political issue; proponents usually assert that the question is neither fundamental nor political. From a Biblical view, Charles W. Colson, author of the essay The Death Penalty is Morally Just, notes that to be punished "is to be treated with dignity as human beings created in the Image of God" (Colson 62). The death penalty, as a punishment for murder, reaffirms a criminal's humanity by taking on responsibility for their actions. It is contrary to the idea that execution degrades a convict sentenced to death. According to van den Haag (1994), "[P]hilosophers, such as Immanuel Kant and G.F.W. Hegel have insisted that, when deserved, execution, far from degrading the executed convict, affirms his humanity by affirming his rationality and his responsibility for his actions"( 257). In spite of benefits and advantages of death penalty, there is a social pressure against this punishment. Still, the death penalty had become an exceptional punishment in all Western democracies by the start of the twentieth century, reserved for only the most serious of offenses, rarely imposed, and regarded as particularly problematic. In all the developed nations, other methods of punishment had replaced the executioner as the principal punishment for serious offenses. Executions remained a

The Great Los Angeles Earthquake Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Great Los Angeles Earthquake - Essay Example enter of the earthquake was around twenty five (25) miles north of Los Angeles and caused considerable damage to the city in terms of life and property of the citizens of Los Angeles. The movie appears to center greatly upon the fact that city officials chose to ignore the warnings that were given by seismologist Dr. Clark Winslow. The movie chooses to stress greatly upon the fact that city officials gave more importance to the calm of the city than to the very life of the city itself. For instance, one of the few areas where the movie reaches its climax is when the city officials finally realize that Dr. Clark Winslow’s warnings were legitimate and begin to advise the citizens of Los Angeles to begin taking immediate precautionary measures. However, as the movie shows, the time to take precautionary measures has passed and the earthquake strikes. The movie stands greatly upon this political intervention and ignorance of the city officials and chooses to use this as the main theme and plot. The movie also establishes itself upon the fact that while Dr. Clark Winslow’s warning was based on a fault line that was located around the Los Angeles area, th e tremors that set the city officials on alert were those that came from a lesser well known fault line near the city. However, leaving behind the main plot, the movie focuses on a number of subplots based upon a number of events that happened to the real people who got trapped in the earthquake and struggled to survive. About twenty thousand (20,000) lives were lost because of The Big One. The movie follows the lives of a few of these people and shows them as they try to resist the damage of the earthquake from trapping them and taking their lives. There is although a certain element of exaggeration in the movie. It appears that the creators of the movie chose to go along with the idea of creating the subplots for the movie out of the people who suffered series of events that could be commercially viable for the