[email protected],
If by your definition, we sell our humanity when we do not set vary
the degree of punishment for crimes of different severity, then we
are not selling our humanity by giving drug traffickers a death
sentence. As we already know, our judicial system awards light or
harsh punishments to criminals depending on what they have done. A
minor gets a lighter sentence than an adult. Robbers get jail;
Molesters get the rotan; Drug traffickers and murderers get death.
The system is also built upon the concept that a harsher sentence
deters the potential criminal, hence the capital punishment for
drug traffickers.
We may compare awarding the death penalty to drug traffickers and
doing the same to murderers. A person who snuffs out the life of an
innocent knowing full well that it is wrong but does so for money
to repay a debt is considered a murderer. The same goes to one who
commits the same crime for hate. They deserve the death penalty. A
person who imports substances very likely to end or ruin totally
the life of several others, and who knows the consequences of his
actions is no different from the two mentioned above. Both
committed a wrongful act of a severity that warrants capital
punishment because they were not ignorant of the results of what
they have done.
Being detached is a necessary quality for a decision maker when it
comes to decisions which carry with it a major impact on the people
affected by it. In this case, the impact falls on the criminal
about the receive the death sentence no doubt. But there is also
the impact the decision has on society, or more precisely, current
and potential drug abusers. A detached person would be able to
judge and balance the options he has with regard to the case at
hand and decide that ultimately, society is of the highest
priority. Should all our decision makers lose this quality, they
would lose their objectivity and illogical decisions would eb the
result. What would become of our society?
Logic cannot be force fed into educated intellectuals with a good
sense of judgement, by the way.
There are also problems arising from the case by case basis of
judging drug traffickers:
1)It will be very difficult to judge the extent of how "good" or
"bad" a criminal is in court. There will always be gray areas in
every case. In fact, it would be safe to say that in court, there
is no perfect proof of exactly how "bad" or how repentant the
trafficker is.
2) Drug kingpins may use the wealth accumulated from his trade to
hire expensive but very competent legal teams who are capable of
enabling him to exploit loopholes in the law or gray areas in the
case to escape the gallows. Runners, being the poorer ones, will
not be able to afford the expenses of a good lawyer and might not
be able to successfully argue his case. Double standards will arise
and the might become unfair. Who knows, the kingpin may even force
a runner to take the blame(and thus also the death sentence) for
him.
3) Kingpins who are not awarded the death penalty may continue to
run his network from his cell. He may even call upon his pawns to
exact revenge on the people who brought him to justice.
People are forewarned of the penalties of commiting crime and are
taught the consequences of their actions. Drug trafficking is a
crime of a severity that well exceeds the need for capital
punishment. Thus, the mandatory death sentence is justified.
