It is a barbaric punishment to kill someone for committing a crime. Punishment must be measured against the benefits and educational aspects that can improve the life and psychology of a perpetrator, not to exact revenge on him. It is understandable that some criminals commit gruesome crimes, but killing them does not teach them anything other than perpetuating the ancient and medieval mentality of ‘eye for an eye’. Killing is not punishment; killing is murder.
There is simply no legal justification for killing another human being. We do not have the moral authority from Nature. It is not within our realm; Nature does not give us that mandate.
Obviously, instead of killing criminals, the governments should take greater a responsibility to prevent the roots of such crimes rather than just trying to prevent crime through the fear of execution, which doesn’t work anyway. No matter how perfect a society, there will probably always be criminals and people with mental issues who do terrible things. But this does not justify killing the criminal.
Capital punishment in its worst form is when someone is executed due to religious and political beliefs or due to intellectual opposition to or protests against their government. Words cannot adequately describe the cruelty of certain governments that kill someone for upholding ideas they don’t approve. This type of violence can and should no longer be tolerated for the decades to come, as we enter in our era of human rights and democracy in its truest sense.
-Dr. Behdad Mojallal (Austria)