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Capital Punishment : A Controversial Topic Within The Legal System And The General Public

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Capital punishment is a highly controversial topic within the legal system and the general public. The death penalty is controversial because many people believe that there is no justification for putting a person to death, even if that person is a convicted murderer. Many also believe that it violates the eighth amendment of the Constitution which says, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted”. Although the overall percentage of people in favor of the death penalty has significantly decreased since the 1990s when it was eighty percent, the majority of the population is still in favor of keeping the death penalty in the American judicial system with sixty one percent. …show more content…

With these factors further calling into question the constitutionality of the death penalty, federal and state courts further analyzed the aspects of the eighth amendment into two general parts, “the method and the amount”. In the Atkins v. Virginia court case of 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that punishments are cruel and unusual if they violate “evolving standards of decency” and so to consider the death penalty unconstitutional, there would have to be a black and white definition of what the standard of decency is in modern day society. Since the standard of decency of our society is still under question and not clearly defined, capital punishment is constitutional as it is a punishment that is “commensurate with the offense committed by the defendant” and not “disproportionately harsh” as deemed by the Appellate courts of the Supreme Court. The death penalty has been misconstrued by opponents as being anti-life, morally wrong, unjust, and unconstitutional; however, capital punishment is issued to protect life and is completely constitutional when the accused is fairly tried, lawfully convicted, and treated respectfully under the laws of the criminal justice system of the United States.
The debate regarding whether or not capital punishment is justifiable dates back to Biblical times and there are references of capital punishment within Biblical texts. When the debate about capital punishment started to arise in the in the

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