Capital Punishment is Wrong Essay

One of many issues that have been core of moral and legal discussions over history has been the death penalty (capital punishment).

Capital punishment is a difficult subject for a lot of people because many question whether or not it is ethical to kill a convicted criminal. In order to critically analyze whether or not it is ethical, I will look at the issue using a utilitarianism approach because in order to get a good grasp of this topic we need to look at how the decision will impact us in the future. The utilitarianism approach will help us to examine this issue and see what some of the consequences are with this topic of capital punishment. For years, capital punishment has been used against criminals and continues to be used today, but lately this type of punishment has come into question because of the ethical question.

The following description of Evans's electrocution was sworn to and verified by Russell F. Canan on June 22, 1983:

     The death penalty is absolutely outrageous. There is no real reason that the government should feel that it has the right to execute people. Capital punishment is murder just as much as the people being executed murdered. The is no need for the death penalty and it needs to be abolished. It goes against the Constitution which states that there will be no cruel and unusual punishment. There is nothing crueler than killing a person.

To date, since 1989, there have been over 1700 exonerations, or convicts proven innocent, in the United States (“The National Registry of Exonerations”). Recently, there’s been about 10 a month (Pelley). A 2014 study conducted by the National Academy of Sciences claims that 4.1% of people sentenced to death are innocent. It goes on to state that: “With an error rate at trial over 4%, it is all but certain that several of the 1,320 defendants executed since 1977 were innocent.” Furthermore, because capital cases are examined more thoroughly than others, the error rate is

2.2 million people are currently incarcerated. A little over 1% of those people are on death row. Those 2,900 people are set to die because they have been convicted of a heinous crime by a jury of their peers who found their guilt to be beyond a reasonable doubt. A study which polls jurors found that eyewitness testimony is the most compelling evidence which leads a jury to convict (Kerr). But researchers and lawyers can attest that not all 2.2 million people who are currently incarcerated are guilty (Innocence). In some percentage of these cases, the eyewitnesses testifying must have been wrong.

There are many injustices that plague the United States Justice System. The death penalty is a prime example of this. A major problem associated with the death penalty is the unavoidable fact that potentially innocent people are being executed. Researchers estimate that over 340 executed inmates, could have been exonerated; which means that over 340 people were wrongfully killed! With the arrival of DNA testing in the mid 80’s, by 1992, 17 death row inmates in the US where acquitted and released. The sad fact remains that all capital punishment cases don’t have DNA evidence, in fact many do not. It is terrifying to contemplate that whether a person lives or dies can be determined based on eyewitness testimony. The innocence Project researchers report that 73% of 239 convictions reversed because of DNA, were based on eyewitness testimony. The only effective way of using the death penalty is to ensure the certainty of guilt amongst the inmates on death row; which is inherently unrealistic or impossible. The injustice does not stop there. Approximately 3% of all executions are botched, meaning that the inmate was conscious, in excruciating pain, or the death was prolonged beyond the intended speed. In cases like Allen Lee Davis’ or Romell Broom, the death penalty is proven to be an inhumane way to punish inmates. The American Civil Liberties Union believes “the death penalty inherently violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the

During the past three decades capital punishment has been a very controversial issue in the United States. 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was unconstitutional because it was a form of "cruel and unusual punishment." However, this decision did not last long; in July 1975 the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment did not violate any parts of the Constitution. Executions as they had before 1972 resumed again. Since then 180 prisoners have been executed. The United States Supreme Court should abolish the death penalty because it is a form of "cruel and unusual punishment."

Although supporters of capital punishment argue that there has been no proof of an innocent person being executed in the past century, more inmates are being exonerated from the death row (SB). It is evident that the criminal justice system makes mistakes as errors have gone through the process. In “Death Penalty Debates: Is the capital punishment system working?” Kenneth Jost stated that a Texas death row inmate, Anthony Graves, spent nearly two decades in prison for a crime he did not commit, becoming the 139th former death row inmate to have been freed of his alleged crime (AP). Some death row inmates were proven innocent by DNA analysis and some were released based on a reexamination of evidence. “Most of the exonerations, like Graves’,

Capital punishment also known as the death penalty, has been around since the earliest of recorded history. Capital punishment is currently used by 31 states and the federal government. The capital punishment debate always sparks controversy amongst people. Proponents argue that it should remain in place to punish those who have committed the most heinous crimes. While opponents argue that to take the life of a life taker, makes us no better than the life taker himself.

The death penalty, properly known as capital punishment, has always been a controversial topic. People of the United States often find themselves in heated discussions over whether or not the death penalty is right. Some would argue the death penalty is right for a small percentage of certain crimes. Although the death penalty can be used as a tool of justice, I still think the death penalty is wrong because it goes against many American beliefs.

Today, there are over three thousand prisoners on death row. “Between 1972 and 1996, 68 death row inmates were released because proof of their innocence was found” (Acker, Bohm, and Lanier 232). Only after struggling

In a cold room of an unmarked building, a man awaits his death. The man lies on a metal table, strapped down like a wild animal. The straps cut into his wrists and legs, but no one cares. He is not scared—not anymore. He has no time for fear now. He vows to think only of the things that matter most—his daughters, his wife, his mother, the sunsets he will never see again, the ice cream he will never again enjoy. He knows he does not deserve to die. Yet nobody in the room cares; not the doctor who prepares the IV, the state official who stays busy scribbling away on meaningless paperwork, or the guards who avoid eye contact in the corner. A man will die soon for something he did not do, and nobody cares. This is the precise reason that he

Should one person have the right to end another human's life? It is a question most people have the answer for when it comes to capital punishment. Capital punishment is known to some people one of the cruelest punishment to humanity. Some people believe giving a person the death penalty doe's not solve anything. While other's believe it is payback to the criminal for the crime they have committed. There have been 13,000 people executed since the colonial times, among 1900 and 1985 there were 139 innocent people sentence to death only 23 were executed. In 1967 lack of support and legal challenges cut the execution rate to zero bringing the practice to a complete end by 1972. Although the supreme court authorized its resumption in 1976

In 1980 Clarence Brandly, a black high school janitor, and his white co-worker found the body of a white female student. As the police interrogated them, the officers told them, "One of you is going to hang for this." As he was looking at Brandly, the officer said, "Since you're the nigger, you're elected." Brandly was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. The evidence against him was weak and the police disregarded other leads. In 1986, a volunteer group devoted to freeing wrongly convicted prisoners came to Brandly's assistance. Meanwhile evidence surfaced that another man had committed the crime that Brandly was convicted for. He wasn't released until 1990