Essay on Lessening Numbers of Executions

Regardless of the fact that social perception of seriousness of crime and adequacy of punishment in different parts of the world are still culturally determined, the number of executions has lessened in proportion almost everywhere. This process can be explained by complication of the process of justice, emergence of novel technologies of investigation, increase in quantity and roominess of prisons, but the real reason is the shift in ethical concepts and values.

Twentieth century introduced the concept of value of human life as a phenomenon; our scientific, technologic and economic levels became high enough to allow sustaining the lives of people who would die inevitably in natural conditions. Contemporary medicine allows saving children born with malformations and serious illnesses, and gives people with genetic defects opportunities to live normal life, and, what is even more important, transfer their genetic codes to their kids. Social programs ensure survival of people, which are unable to earn their living for various reasons, and educational and occupational opportunities for minorities are numerous. The world has become much more humane through the last centuries, and lessening the number of executed wrongdoers is easily explained with this tendency. Kozinski points out that the Supreme Court has "constructed a highly complex – and mutually contradictory series of conditions that must be satisfied before a death sentence may be carried out" (p.10), therefore even those offenders who are convicted and sentenced to death penalty have considerable chances of getting a remission, or at least, of postponing their sentence for decades.

The arguments for both abolishing and keeping death penalty are numerous. Opponents of capital punishment argue that it is, in fact, a legalized murder. They claim that even when committed in accordance with certain rules, and upon authorization of the government and society, execution, in fact, remains a murder, which is a doing prohibited both by religious and secular laws of any country. They argue that abolition is the only ethically acceptable alternative.

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