But without one official teaching on the death penalty, that monks are typically divided on issue with some favoring abolition of death penalty while other see it as bad karma stemming from bad action in the past.
However most of the nations that have historically been Buddhist including China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand …show more content…
According to Lord Denning, punishment is "emphatic denunciation" of a crime by the society. Retribution is essentially based on the idea of vengeance. According to Edvin Ropper, ''Vengeance is part of the nature of a man and the instinct of revenge which every man possesses”
Whenever a crime is committed against any person, the first instinct of the victim is to take revenge and sometimes the crime is so heinous and ghastly that this feeling no more remains confined to the victim alone, but its tentacles spread to every nook and comer of the society, as a corollary, there is an upsurge for revenge. Public demonstration and large hue & cry against alleged culprits in Anjana Mishra rape case in Orissa or rape and brutal molestation of nuns in Gujrat, are the glaring examples of manifestation of public revolt and demand for capital punishment for them. Can any organ of the Government entrusted with the task of administrating justice afford to ignore it? The answer is an emphatic no. If it does so, I feel it fails in its primary duty which is to cater to those instincts; as the feelings of vengeance have primitive unconscious …show more content…
In such cases it is maintained that simple justice demands a life for life. It is claimed that murderer has forfeited the right to live. The law of retaliation is pressed into action to support a publicly regulated substitute for private vengeance.
In his opinion for the majority on Gregg v. Georgia upholding the death penalty as constitutionally permissible. Justice Stewart observed that capital punishment "« an expression of society's moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct... It is essential in an ordered society that asks its citizens to rely on legal processes rather than self-help to vindicate their wrongs". Without orderly means of imposing penalties upon offenders, proportionate to what the aggrieved parties feel is deserved, society runs the risk of anarchy and lynch law. Lord Justice Denning told the British Royal Commission on capital punishment, "some crimes are so outrageous that society insists on adequate punishment, because the wrong doers deserve it, irrespective of whether it is deterrent or