ABSTRACT
The death penalty is a lethal instrument of social control that political entities use to assert power over the lives of those deemed undesirable and disposable for some reason. Those on whom the death penalty is visited could be criminal law breakers, political adversaries or simply members of a dispossessed group in a particular society. Death by execution is a direct and intentional killing and as such raises serious moral questions. The death penalty ought to be an important topic for consideration for those who are interested in pacifism and nonviolence. The death penalty is a killing, and the violence involved in such a killing cannot be hidden no matter how sanitized or, as in lethal injection, “medicalized” the method of dispatch. The death penalty has long been defended as a just and equitable response to the worst thing a human being can do, which is to take another person’s life unjustly.
