Capital Punishment Of The United States

Out of the 50 states, 26 of them have had at least one death row execution. American people (approximately 65%) say that they are still strong supporters in the Death Penalty. That is over half of the American population, for the Death Penalty. One may argue that it is a horrible way of giving people what they deserve; however, those people may not see the mistakes these people have made, making them not agree with this act. As this may be a contradiction, capital punishments is one of the life learning punishments known. It is legal in many states, but that doesn’t make it fair to all because its blameful, the cost is outrageous, and it’s time that needs to be spent helping, instead of killing.

In these two short essays, one by Anthony G. Amsterdam and another by Ernest Van Den Haag both authors make two very important views. Although one supports capital punishment and one is against capital punishment, both authors have good reasons to support their case. Amsterdam believes that capital punishment is a brutal process that a murderer has to go through. Amsterdam believes that the murderer should be punished for their actions, but should not go through capital punishment. Although Ven Den Haag agrees that capital punishment is one of the harshest penalties, it should nevertheless be used. Ven Den Haag believes that a murderer should take responsibility for their actions,

Gangsters, thieves, killers, and every other criminal who commits a capital offense knows that without capital punishment, they can “run the town”. They will be able to evoke fear into everyone’s hearts knowing, if they got arrested the worse punishment they would have to endure would be a few years in prison with a good chance of parole. Serial killers, manslaughters, would be released back into civilization on “good behavior” to walk next to you to the bus stop, work with you, or even live next door to you if they were thought to have changed. According to David Muhlhausen, each execution, on average, results in 18 fewer murders. Capital punishment doesn’t just take lives, it saves them.

As Cass R states… “Capital punishment may be morally required, not for retributive reasons, but rather to prevent the taking of innocent lives”. Death penalty is one of those extreme punishments that would create fear in the mind of any person. If murderers are sentenced to death and executed, potential murderers will think twice before killing for fear of losing their own life.

Many times when watching television, we see horrible news about a crime committed, which is most likely is not in self-defense. The first thing that comes to our minds; this person is going to receive the death penalty. First-degree murder triggers our emotions to see justice. Even in a country where everyone is innocent until proven guilty, we are quick to pass judgment and convict the suspect in question. With technology so advanced in the United States where we can receive the news even into our phones, many times the accused do not received a fair trial. On the other hand, the incompetence of lawyers has created great doubt on the delivery of justice. Additionally, by eliminating the capital punishment will help alleviate the financial

Desmond Tutu once said, "To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice." This statement has many people questioning the type of “justice” that the federal government demonstrates. Capital punishment is easily defined as killing someone for committing a crime. Murder is the killing of one person by another. The only difference between an executioner and a murderer is that an executioner has “permission” from the law to take the life of another person. The United States of America has been executing people for crimes since the founding of the original colonies; however, how justifiable is each execution? Capital punishment is not an effective way of ensuring justice is done.

Today our society is assaulted with a barrage of violent images, whether fictional or not. People no longer think twice when they see a character die in a movie or a bullet riddled high-schooler jump out of a second story window. The concept of human life has completely lost its meaning. Capital punishment contributes to this problem. A convict is not thought of as a person. All humanity associated with them is removed. This rationalization is required in order have a society where capital punishment is legal. If a society removes humanity from convicts, characters in movies, or people on the 6 o'clock news it will begin to remove humanity from people encountered in every day life.

After that it's important to consider prison overpopulation when looking at another reason why capital punishment could be necessary. In Source B, it should a graph of the prison population from the 60’s to 2008. The population has skyrocketed from less than a half million to almost two and half a million people. Many inmates are serving life sentences, and have no chance of parole, according to Source H. “What about people already sentenced to life in prison. What's to stop them from murdering people constantly while in prison? What are they going to do--extend their sentences?” This is really showing how need Capital Punishment is, to ensure not only the safety of innocent people, but the safety of the people that are in prison as well.

A good fact to start with is that the capital punishment, regarded to lessen offenders, “effectively stops violent criminals and murderers from committing more crimes”, “creates a little more safety in society for all

Capital punishment can act as a source of relief to the loved ones of those who have been affected and can be helpful in promoting healing for the affected victim's families. And this is because of the assurance that the victims cannot be in the position to hurt them again. It is clear that if the offender is not sentenced to death the family members and loved ones will remain living in fear, thinking one day this offender will be on the streets again. This can result in revenge and retaliation that will lead to more crimes in society. It may give rise to the increase of the question as to why somebody who has hurt an innocent person will still be living in this world and yet they are supposed to suffer, and why criminals are given so many

We need to keep the population of prisoners down. Capital punishment will eliminate overpopulation in prison systems. Right now most prisons are overflowing and can’t keep up with the amount of criminals that are being issued to them. This is a huge problem when it comes to the spread of diseases in every form. Prison is a horrible place but its even worse when you have to accommodate with so many others. Also, it is not fair when a person who went to jail for possession of marijuana is sharing a cell with a mass murderer. In my opinion I don’t think our tax dollars should go to keeping a murder alive, I would much rather it go towards giving them death. Without the death penalty, murderers would be more likely to kill because they know that that they will spend the rest of their life in prison and will be well taken care of rather then being put to death, this is the ultimate warning not to commit murder. The fear of death itself is the greatest deterrent for

Furthermore, on top of not reducing criminal activities, Capital punishment is a waste of money. Dieter state that Over two-thirds of the states and the federal government have installed an exorbitantly expensive system of capital punishment which has been a failure by any measure of effectiveness. Literally, hundreds of millions of dollars have already been spent on a response to crime which is calculated to be carried out on a few people each year and which has done nothing to stem the rise in violent crime (Dieter n.d.)When in fact there is another way to go about it. The death penalty is much more expensive than its closest alternative -- life imprisonment with no parole. Capital trials are longer and more expensive at every step than other murder trials. (Dieter n.d.)Over the past three decades, there has been a downward trend in the number of murders that lead to arrest and conviction to the point that only

Capital punishment has been around for many years as a way of executing criminals. Despite what most believe, capital punishment is not functional in the American society. Defenders of the death penalty often claim that the execution of criminals will teach others not to do bad, initially decreasing crime rates. Unfortunately, statistics prove that thought to be wrong. Capital punishment also has great flaws. For example, many innocent people have been put to death because of capital punishment. There also is no consistency. Two of the same crimes can be convicted in two different states and the consequences with be different for both offenders. The death penalty shows to be

Support for the death penalty in the U.S. has risen to an average of 80%

It does not take much to recognize that the human race is a well-developed and remarkable species. If aliens were to land anywhere on Earth tomorrow, they would probably marvel at our communication constructs and institutions that we have created over the years to organize our lives and how we relate to others. However, they would also notice that we are far from perfect. Humans are no stranger to crime and are ultimately a selfish species. In order for our society to run, we have allowed necessary evils to become a common construct in our day to day lives. Necessary evils are constructs that do some harm but generally create order and good in the end, creating a Utilitarian-esque outcome. Capital punishment in America is a necessary evil; it may cause a minimal amount of harm to the criminal, but on a larger scale, killing a person that has shown no respect for human life acts as a deterrent for future crimes and gives victims justice. Capital punishment is justified in the case of murder where no mitigating circumstances are present.