Lex Talionis

Leslie Cantu:

"People that favor the death penalty agree that capital punishment is a relic of barbarism, but as murder itself is barbaric, they contend that death is a fitting punishment for it" (Jayewardene 87). Retentionists are most often subscribers to the "an eye for an eye" principle and feel that execution is the only way to satisfy the public as well as themselves. Who doesn't enjoy it when, for example, someone steals ten dollars from you and then the person who stole your money has the same thing happen to them? Retentionists feel much the same way about murderers who are sentenced to die. As far as they are concerned, the criminal brought his punishment upon himself; they deserve what they get. When proponents of the death penalty are thrown the arguement of capital punishment being a tragic loss of human life, the majority respond "even in the tragedy of human death there are degrees, and that it is mucn more tragic for the innocent to lose his life than for the State to take the life of a criminal convicted of a capital offense" (Bedau 308).


Dustin Cox:

Capital punishment is a method of retributive punishment as old as civilization itself. Both the Greeks and the Romans invoked the death penalty for a wide variety of offenses. Socrates and Jesus were perhaps the most famous people ever condemned for a capital crime in the ancient period. Hammurabi's Code, a code of laws developed by the king of one of the first empires, dates back from the third or second millennium before Christ. This code claims that retribution, an eye for an eye and a life for a life, is justice. In Anglo-American law the death penalty has been a customary response to certain kinds of offenses. The movement in America to have the death penalty declared unconstitutional received paramount attention during the landmark case of 'Furman v. Georgia,' rendered on June 29, 1972, which declared the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment. No executions took place between 1967 and 1977 (Bedau, 1992). However, after a supreme court decision in 1975 'Gregg v. Georgia', which stated capital punishment did not violate the Eighth Amendment, executions commenced again under state supervision. Should capital punishment be continued? Retribution is a justification for capital punishment because it is an injustice to tolerate criminal behavior such as murder.


Jon Manning:

If someone is lined up for execution then they more than likely deserve it. They have caused a great deal of grief to the family and friends of the victim or victims and it seems like the only way justice could be served is for the criminal to die. For the person to simply go to jail seems unfair. There they will eat three meals a day, get to watch cable t.v., and befriend other inmates. They live a pretty decent life in prison and they don't deserve it.


Jessica Spinler:

Despite the moral argument concerning the inhumane treatment of the criminal, we return to the "nature" of the crime committed. Can society place an unequal weight on the tragically lost lives of murder victims and the criminal? This is not an exam question in a college philosophy course but a moral conundrum at the core of perhaps the most intriguing issue facing the U. S. Supreme Court today. Punishment is meted out because of the nature of the crime, devoid of any reference to the social identity of the victim. Compassion and political calculation have combined to transform victims and their advocates into a potent lobbying force. Beginning in California, 1987, the Supreme court carved out a crucial exception: Neither the life of the victim nor the suffering of his survivors could be a factor in any state or federal case punishable by death (Shapiro, 61). The catch is that every reduction in the elaborate legal process that has evolved to ensure that only the guilty die increases the chances that an innocent person, victim, will be subjected to this most irreversible and final of punishments, injustices. The possibility of an innocent person being put to death is another factor some people have against the death penalty. According to the 1987 Stanford University survey, at least 23 Americans have been wrongly executed in the 20th century (Kramer, 32).