Capital Punishment
Capital punishment is a legal death penalty ordered by the court for a crime that a criminal has committed. The way of punishment differs from country to country. There are various methods of capital punishment such as lethal injection, hanging, electrocution, gas chamber, etc.
In the past, capital punishments are more like torture rather than the death penalty. They used to strain and punish the body of the culprit to the extreme that the culprit dies because of the pain or fear of torture.
Modern methods are quicker and less painful than past. Some of them are-
Electrocution in which the criminal is tied to a chair and a high voltage current passed through their body.
Tranquilization method gives the person a slow but painless death because it is a lethal injection.
Beheading is generally used in the Arab and Gulf countries. In this method, they cut the criminal’s head apart from the body.
Stoning is the most painful method of punishment. In this, the criminal is beaten till death.
In shooting the criminal is either shot in the head or in the chest.
In hanging they simply hung the culprits until death.
Besides, the murderer faces a firing squad, he is burnt alive at the stake, the criminal is made to drown, he is thrown before hungry beasts of prey or into a poisonous gas chamber, etc.
The advantage of capital punishment is that they give people an idea of what the law is capable of doing and the criminal can never escape from the punishment.
The disadvantages are that they do not give the person a second chance. Even many times the real criminal escapes the trial and the innocent one is claimed to be guilty.
Most people think that punishment for crimes like murders, rapes, and mass killings should not be death. The death penalty cannot reform a criminal. Some think that one should not take the role of God in taking away anybody’s life for any reason. Likewise, a criminal has no right to take away anyone’s life for any reason at all. If a person can take someone’s life, he has no right to live in a civilized society.
Capital punishment is the harsh reality of our world that violates many human rights. But at the same time, it decreases the crime rate and changes the minds of future criminals. Capital punishment should be given in the rarest cases after proper investigation of the criminal’s offence.