Introduction
The death penalty, which involves punishing criminals by death regarding the crimes they committed remains one of the most controversial and hotly debated issues not only in the United States but across the world (Collins et al., 2016). Proponents of the death penalty believe that it is the best strategy to deter crimes in the world. Some of these proponents argue that states have the moral right to execute people who kill others for selfish gains. However, many people continue to criticize the death penalty and its moral campus. Many critics believe that a death penalty is an inhuman act because it goes against the will of God who gives life and should be the one to take it away, not necessarily men (Ahmad, 2015). Therefore, this proposal seeks to examine the concept of death penalty alongside its moral campus. Specifically, the research focuses on a detailed description of the problem of the death penalty, a comprehensive review of the literature concerning this challenge, and a description of the anticipated research process.
Description of the Problem
Engle (2019) defined the death penalty as a typical form of government-sectioned practice in which the state puts to death its citizen as a predetermined punishment for a specific crime committed. Many jurisdictions also refer to the death penalty as capital punishment. Offences punished by death, include mass killings, murder, aggravated levels of rape, treason, and terrorism. Additional examples include blasphemy, drug smuggling, and betrayal (Sethuraju et al., 2016). The state of capital punishment in the United States remains critical despite initiatives undertaken by various stakeholders, including policymakers, private agencies, and community organizations, to abolish it. A total of 29 States in the United States of American continue to punish its criminals using the death penalty despite being eliminated in 21 states (Brandt & Kovandzic, 2015). Arguably, the death penalty is an act with a highly-questionable moral campus.
Collins et al. (2016) argue that the death penalty is not only cruel but also pointless and an ineffective way of preventing and ending crimes. Capital punishment can lead to an increased number of people dying regardless of being adequately investigated on whether they committed the alleged offences. Comparative studies indicate that states executed a total of 1516 people since 1970s in the United States despite a remarkable decline in their numbers over the last two decades (Sethuraju et al., 2016). Most of these executions occurred mainly in a limited number of states alongside a small number of outlier counties. The number of people executed represents a critical amount of human resources that the country could correct using other morally justifiable approaches to make a significant contribution to its economy (Sethuraju et al., 2016). Therefore, it remains imperative to research the issue of capital punishment to help in broadening its understanding and its underlying \moral campus.
Literature Review
A plethora of researchers continues to direct their focus on helping the community to have a detailed understanding of the death penalty and its moral campus (Collins et al., 2016). However, there remains a sharp division among these researchers on the need to abolish or sustain capital punishment as one of the best strategies for deterring crimes. For instance, Engle (2019) argued that a death penalty is a cruel form of punishment that deprives people their right to life. Ahmad (2015) added that human life is extremely precious, and states should, therefore, not take it away in such a simple way. Also, opponents of the death penalty believe that the practice is merely a revenge strategy, which entails using a crime to pay for a wrong committed by an offender. Since two wrongs cannot make a right, death punishment remains an unfair approach that does not deliver justice both to the plaintiff and the defendant (Brandt & Kovandzic, 2015). States put offenders on death row for a very long time which increases their sufferings and transforms it into torture that is difficult for people to endure, which in turn, makes the killing of criminals not to qualify as a moral right.
Conversely, many proponents of the death penalty believe that no murders, human and drug traffickers, terrorists, and tyrannical leaders deserve to live. Proponents are of the view that states should punish such criminals through death to create fairness. Collins et al. (2016) ascertained that killing murders is a vital strategy justified not only in the law of the United States but also in the Bible where God determined that people who kill others also deserve to die. On the one hand, such individuals fail to understand that God has the right to decide on the people to live and wane regardless of the mistakes they committed. Many critiques, on the other hand, believe that states need to abolish the death penalty because it does not deter crime not only in the United States but across the world. Ahmad (2015) maintained that most of the people found guilty for committing capital offences, such as the killing of others, neither planned nor wished to do the act. For instance, most of the capital offences occur as a result of being forced by circumstances. The failure of the existing literature to effectively determine the moral campus of death penalty necessitates the need to research to increase its understanding and its moral justification.
Description of Project
This research project aims to create a comprehensive understanding of the concept of the death penalty and its moral campus as practised in numerous countries across the world, including America. However, this study will exclusively focus on the United States because it provides the best example of a country that continues to struggle with the move to ban as well as retain the death penalty. The death penalty remains vital in punishing offenders in a total of 29 states, despite its abolishment in 21 states (Brandt & Kovandzic, 2015). Also, some of the regions that prohibit the death penalty are still weighing on whether to reinstitute it to help in crime deterrence. This study will, therefore, use a qualitative descriptive methodology to delve into the issue of the death penalty and its moral campus. The primary reason for choosing this research approach is to collect adequate information on the opinions of various stakeholders in the American criminal justice industry.
The researcher will randomly select the study participants, including inmates put on death row and ex-inmates initially charged and recommended to receive a capital punishment before being released for various reasons. Additional participants will include policymakers from multiple state governments, family members of the death penalty victims, inmates waiting for death, and representatives of numerous human rights movements and agencies. The researcher will use mixed methods to collect data. Combining various data collection strategies is crucial because one technique tends to compensate for the flaws associated with the other (Creswell & Creswell, 2019). Therefore, the researcher will use questionnaires due to their portability and easy to fill to collect data from the respondents. Consequently, other techniques, including recorded interviews, focused group discussions, and observation will provide valid, credible, and reliable information regarding the identified injustices (Ahmad, 2015). Lastly, the researcher will check the collected data based on correctness, analyze it, and present it using appropriate tools, such as tables, graphs, and pie-charts.
