Does the death penalty have a place in a civilized society?

With the exception of the United States every western country has abolished the death penalty. While 36 nations around the world still carry out the death penalty as capital punishment.

The old saying an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind comes to mind when i first think of the death penalty, however im also a firm believer that you reap what you sow and in some cases, for example war crimes, the rape of a child or mass killings i believe you do not have the right to exist anymore. You are unlikely to be rehabilitated and you do not deserve a second chance.

In monetary terms it is actually far more expensive to seek the death penalty. Cases without the death penalty cost around $740,000 while cases with the death penalty are around $1.26 million. It also costs more to house death row inmates at around $90,000 more per year than gen-pop prisoners. Another contributing factor is that we generally have to hold a death row prisoner for quite a long time with all the avenues for appeal etc etc.

But let's ignore money for a minute and think about the moral effect this has on us as a society. It is believed around 1 in every 25 inmates sentenced to death in the U.S are innocent. That's 1 man or woman who has done nothing wrong that is being killed for every 24 that have done something heinous. A sentence of life without parole means that prisoner will die in prison so is this not good enough?

The U.S actually has quite a low rate of death row executions in comparison to some other nations( see below image from amnesty international)

If we kill someone because they killed someone are we any better than them? its a very difficult moral question and as everyone's moral compass points in slightly different directions it can be hard to judge. Personally i dont think removing a violent offender from society is morally but at the same time I dont think we have the right to end a life . Are we trying to play god when we decide the fate of someone elses life?

We also need to take into account the methods of execution used and how successful they really are.
Austin Sarat, a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College reports that over 120 years, 8,776 people were executed and 276 of those executions (3.15%) went wrong in some way. In fact the only method of execution with a 0% botched execution rate was firing squad.

One of the more gruesome botched executions occured in 1983 when one Clayton lockett was sentenced to death by electric chair.

The chair passed 1,900 volts of electricity through his body for 30 seconds but failed to kill him. Sparks began to fly and he actually burst into flame. Witnesses to the execution claim he clenched his fists slammed back into his chair and convulsed as the room quickly filled with the stench of burning flesh and when 2 doctors determined he was still alive a second and third wave of electricity was administered to finish the job.

As a civilized society we are supposed to be against "cruel and unusual punishment" however the death penalty is often just that.

In all honesty i think we should find an uninhabited island somewhere and condemn life prisoners to live on it and fend for themselves. They will be at the mercy of the other monsters of society and will likely meet a fitting end to their lives.

The crimes that call for capital punishment often stir up deep emotions in us that can make us think and act irrationally but we need to remember our humanity.

Capital punishment will always be a debatable topic for society when it comes to our worst offenders but we need to consider the slippery slope that is deciding if another person lives or dies.

Tell me what you think below.