Mainul H Khan said,

“Most of the modern humanity is against capital punishment. These opponents of capital punishment argue that killing is always wrong, whether it is in the name of justice or not. They claim everyone’s right to life should be protected by law, including criminals. 

On the other hand, proponents of capital punishment argues that a murderer has given up his/her right to life when he/she took the life of another person. Besides, death penalty saves lives by preventing would-be murderers by setting example of severe consequence.

What if these two sides considered life after death as a reality? Do you think one or both would change their view? If so, why?” 

M Samir Hossain said in reply,

“To be honest, all that I’ll mention here is my personal view based on facts. To explain the whole thing from my side, I will focus on it from three different perspectives. 

When we say Capital punishment, we usually mean “death” as punishment. It has been evident that we, humans, prefer to avoid death, even in terms of the words we use for language. Therefore, as a whole, capital punishment shares the stigma as “death” does in society. It has the similar kind of sentiment against it, just like death, from all walks of life. Even those who advocate for capital punishment are not at ease with the phenomenon either.

If we think critically, we can understand the social view towards death from the use of the term of capital punishment. The term capital punishment can be used for lifelong imprisonment as well. That indicates that when the punishment takes away the “complete life” it is named capital. In a crude but clear way, it shows that death is equivalent to the abolition of the complete life, hence as punishment they sometimes share the same name.

Punishing someone at some point in life, long, short, big or small, is much preferable to ending the whole life as punishment. Obviously, that is the key viewpoint when we talk against “death” as punishment. It is completely based on the assumption that death is the absolute end of one’s existence. In this scenario, there is no afterlife as the afterlife will change capital punishment to justified or normal punishment; it would not be inhumane anymore. But for that, the perception of death in society has to change clearly, that is, once we practically count on life after death, we will be able to rethink capital punishment in a humane way.

To me, unfortunately, the dilemma of capital punishment in society is largely an outcome of the perception of death. Unbelievable though, if we consider the outcomes of the perception of death, we might find a huge number of issues existing in and around us where the capital punishment issue would seem to be a very small portion. On the good side, it gives us a root to many social issues that can be, theoretically, managed by dealing with the practical perception of death in society.”