Ethical Controversy

     Another major concern with the death penalty, possibly foremost in the general public's mind is the moral right or wrongness of the death penalty.  From newborn to adult almost all of us are taught the principle that two wrongs don't make a right.  Killing is no exception to this idea simply because it is on a larger scale.  The idea of trading a life for a life, and having punishment alike to the crime comes originally from the code of Hammurabi, an almost 4000 year old document representing the views of our most primitive and basic past civilizations.  Based on these principles, shouldn't we be sexually assaulting all of our rapists?  That does not seem quite right.  As a certain Mahatma Gandhi once said, "an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind".
 


      The use of the death penalty also promotes the use of killing as a way to resolve difficult or extreme situations.  It could prompt people into matters into their own hands, because if killing a person for having killed some one is right, then why shouldn't the family of murder victims simply go after the murderers?  And why shouldn't the murderer's family then kill the murderer of the murderer?  This creates a vicious circle of killing that seems to be never ending, and resembles the behavior of our earliest and most savage ancestors.

     There are also many religions, making up the majority of the Canadian population, which are fundamentally against the death penalty.  It would be outside the comfort zone of many of them if we had death penalty.  The Christian faith, for example, dictates that we should "love our enemy", and he will be judged later when he goes to heaven or hell.  This perspective, though through different belief systems, is also held by the Buddhist and Jewish faiths.