"In Canada, the death penalty has been rejected as an acceptable element of criminal justice. Capital punishment engages the underlying values of the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. It is final and irreversible. Its imposition has been described as arbitrary and its deterrent value has been doubted." Supreme Court of Canada.

Prior to 1961, any person convicted of murder in Canada could be given the death penalty and executed. . However, the Governor General had the power to change the sentence from death to life imprisonment if he wished. The offence of murder was divided into two subcategories: capital murder and non-capital murder. Capital murder was defined as planned and deliberate murder of a police officer or corrections officer while they were on duty.

One of the earliest accounts of capital punishment was in 1749 when Peter Carteel, a sailor aboard the ship Beaufort in Halifax harbor, ran wild with a knife and killed the boatswain’s mate. The case was brought before the Captain's Court. He was found guilty, sentenced to death. The earliest trials and death sentences of our nation took place on ships that lay off our eastern or western coastlines. Any o

Abolitionists consider the death penalty an insufficient form of punishment because it is cruel and inhumane, there is no proof that it deters violent crime. It can be inflicted upon people innocent of any crime, the costly process of appealing gives the death penalty a hefty price tag and with the death penalty, the chance to make restitution to the victim and/or the victim's family does not exist. The essence of the abolitionist perspective is this:

The most important and most debatable argument against the death penalty is the question that, “Is the death penalty a deterrent to violent crime? Deterrence is used to suggest that executing murderers will decrease the homicide rate by causing other potential murderers not to commit murder because of the fear of being executed themselves. This is called general deterrence. Specific deterrence is that the murderer will not kill again, thereby justifying the execution. It has been documented that in the U.S. states with the death penalty shows murder rates higher than non-death penalty states. A study from the University of Florida shows that 90 percent of the United States’ top criminologists concluded that killing people to deter violent crime is a big waste of valuable time and money. FBI Crime Reports show no change in the American homicide rate. In fact, Isaac Ehrlich's study on the deterrent effect of capital punishment in America reveals this. It spans twenty-five years, 1957-1982, and shows that in the first year the study was conducted there were 8,060 murders in 1957 and 65 executions. However, in the last year of the study, there was 22,520 murders committed and 1 execution performed. The absence of deterrence is clearly shown. This is known as “brutalization hypothesis” and suggests that the death penalty increase’s the homicide rate (www.napa.com).

Unlike imprisonment, the death penalty entails the risk of judicial errors, which can never be fixed. There will always be a risk that some prisoners who were innocent will be executed. The death penalty will not prevent them from repeating a crime, which they did not commit in the first place. A study by the Bedau and Radelet stated that capital convictions for the period from 1900 to 1986 identified 350 cases in which defendants were erroneously convicted of capital crimes. (www.worldpolicy.com). Undoubtedly many more cases of mistaken conviction and execution occur and remain undocumented. A prisoner discovered to be blameless can be freed; but neither release nor compensation is possible for a corpse. Years after the abolition of the death penalty in Canada, Guy Paul Morin, Donald Marshall and David Milgard were each convicted of murder. If the death penalty were still around at the time of the sentence, the three men would have been executed. It’s a good thing it wasn’t. With technological advancements and DNA procedures, the three men were found to be innocent and freed after serving many years for murders they did not commit. “Execution is a passed on vengeance and is therefore morally wrong, execution itself is equivalent to murder, the penalty of death is too severe, and that executing the defendant will not bring back the victim or end the suffering of survivors.” (www.cuadp.org)

Many people are against capital punishment because they feel that it does not belong in the justice system. The most compelling arguments that are against capital punishment are that many people say it is morally wrong, it’s too expensive and also it does n

Some topics in this essay:
House Commons, David Milgard, Leopold Loeb, Bill C-85, Isaac Ehrlich's, John Evans, Defense Act, Canada Prior, Bedau Radelet, death penalty, Canada Canada, capital punishment, homicide rate, house commons, death penalty canada, life imprisonment, violent crime, leopold loeb, cruel unusual, victim's family, penalty canada, murder police officer, deliberate murder police, planned deliberate murder, abolition death penalty,