The death penalty while often talked about and favored it is often a far-flung notion in the political process, be it in Europe, to Russia, to even states within the US it was long abolished, and within the states that have it's often called for but rare and even further rare is to see it fully through with the element of long waiting times, appeals and the like, to the point prisoners may even die of natural circumstances while on death row. Because of the nature of execution, the system in place is there for appeals as new evidence comes to light or physiological examinations on the criminal.

The risk

With any use of the justice system miscarriages of justice happen, getting framed for instance and new evidence can be discovered that put the crime charged with in a whole new context. Think of the people who have been wrongly convicted of a crime and are later released when proven innocent, this is impossible with a wrongful conviction of the death penalty, thus comes the previous mentioned issue of waiting times, times of appeal and the elongated process. We either have a long process or risk of executing innocent people, at this point we’ve greatly slimmed the use of execution even in that slim amount of people convicted, really what is the difference between a person on death row passing off old age and a prisoner on a life sentence?

Humane executions

The notion of this is strange, there is a desire for a person to suffer and face something they deserve but not too much to the point a humane execution method should be used, we understand how bad it would be to set someone alight with a flamethrower for an execution method, but we rather have the prisoner fry in an electric chair, or be beheaded, the human execution is rather a myth, in the sense that it's not for the prisoner’s fate to be humane but the execution and onlooker. For instance a weighted hanging is more painless than a beheading, it is a simple drop and snap but to us the viewer and the execution it seems far more brutal, contrast this to lethal injection, to us the viewer this seems humane and simple when in reality it is often botched and painful for the prisoner, the English and Japanese method while seeming more gruesome is less painful, but certainly with the dread the prisoner faces seeing the noose or the bag on there head being dragged to there death for their neck to be broken is certainly not humane.

Reform and punishment

The alternative we look into reforming a person, this isn’t always the case but when successful goes great for the greater good and puts the person on the path to committing greater good, like an ailment cured at hospitals. Of course the misconception of reform is, its soft and doesn’t punish the criminal that the criminal lives better off in prison and gains from their horrible crime in the end, this isn’t the case in the path of proper reform, to get a prisoner to start the basic of choirs they must be in fear of the guards baton and of the potential of confinement once you are past that threshold we can put them into the process of reforming, from that we can learn and the path of reform sets us on the way to help society as a whole. Even with someone of an evil nature which we can never be aware of which peoples with an evil nature can be reformed or not the desire to punish and make them suffer for there crime is extended in prison if you solely look into that process and if we have a person of that nature then the system trying to reform them will simply keep punishing them. This stops further crime, and punishes the most evil of criminals properly. With the death penalty and if there is nothing past this mortal coil, then we have let the prisoner go.

The victim

The Key point often in the discussion is that the death penalty grants the victim a justice in a sense, that once a person committed of a crime it is a justice for said people that the person is executed, this in reality is much rarer often it is people unaffected by the criminal act itself that call for the death penalty. What good does it do for the victims to have a man brought to the gallows? It doesn’t undo the act of rape, it doesn’t bring someone from death, it doesn’t untortured someone, it simply is the expression of primal anger of people to express it. When, if we truly want the victim to be in the best state of mind, what is good at making it so they question themselves on the person that has been sent to death? What if they face anxieties that the wrong person was convicted, and they have innocent blood on their hands? The victim is not served by the execution.

The Buddhist view;

The simple default is that Buddhism is opposed to the death penalty, in Buddhism to attain human birth is precious and to cut it short is wasteful when a person even in the confines of a cell might be able to attain merit and attain a rebirth that wouldn’t be possible outside a human body, why would we squander there opportunity for this? If we have them doing good actions and attaining merit then they may even be saved from rebirth from hell, the lord implores us to give mercy. Buddhist spiritual teachers have commented on this;

“The death penalty is pure violence, a barbaric and useless violence. Dangerous even, because it can only lead to other acts of violence — as all violence does. The supreme punishment ought to be a life sentence, and one without brutality.” - His Holiness The Dalai Lama

“All sentient beings can become Buddhas. There are only people who have done bad things; there are no eternally, unchangingly bad people. Abolishing capital punishment should take two paths: One is to consider how to legally decrease the number of death sentences, and the other is to promote religious education so as to prevent crime from the bottom. If people all reached a high level of Buddhist or religious cultivation, no one would commit capital crimes.” – Master Sheng-yen

Further reading

I recommend the movie I’ll link here, it was by channel 4! It's called the execution of Garry glitter. The film is powerful in its showing of how purely mob driven and nonsensical the call for the death penalty is, it has a despicable person played accurately to the person being smug, coy and even joking about his crimes against children, but even with that we see in front of us a man brought to his knees, dragged mercilessly to the gallows in panic and the fear in his voice and face. A despicable man, an evil one, but what does executing him give us? A man, blinded by his own evil nature begging at the sight of a noose begging for his glass’s before a bag is thrown on his head, who gains from that? Not the victim, the crowd cheer it on, but they are unaffected, people will simply want to insert themselves for bloodlust, how is this a merciful society how disgraced would we seem to the lord to have such a nature?

(To watch, simply click the image)

And the other documentary simply called Executions, it will show the sight of the logic and the brutality of executions in an unmoving documentary that properly shows the act.