Death Penalty

The death penalty, or capital punishment, has always been a topic of much debate in the United States. There are those who support it and those who oppose it, and each side has their fair share of points being made, backed by supportive evidence. The topics range from the morality of this punishment, including the methods of execution as well as fairness issues in regards to sex and race. The first issue that will be addressed is in regards to the death penalty working to prevent violent crimes.

The article that I read from Amnesty USA was about how the race of homicide victims affects the results of whether or not a defendant in a capital case will receive the death penalty. The article provides a graph that showed how death row inmates who have killed white victims have been executed 77% of the time. However, death row inmates who have killed African American victims have only been executed 15% of the time. Since 1977, the vast majority of defendants in capital cases have been executed for killing white victims, even though African-Americans make up more than half of the total number of homicide victims.

Capital Punishment is used in the judicial system unfairly and as a weapon against minorities. This is mostly due in part to racism in the courts by the lawyers and judges. Race continues to plague the application of the death penalty in the United States. On the state

In 2015, over one thousand six hundred and thirty-four people were executed through the death penalty, and eighty-nine percent of them occurred in just three countries alone. The United States is one of these countries, with thirty-two states who allow capital punishment, primarily by lethal injections. Although many people believe that the death penalty is a deserving punishment for criminals, capital punishment is inhumane because it makes us as a society commit the same violent acts we hold criminals accountable for.

The death penalty has been a controversy in the United States justice system since its commencement (Bakken & Morris, 2010). Although extremely controversial, it has stood the test of time as the definitive penalty. Numerous countries are at present bring an end their death penalty law. Contrary to that, the United States has thirty eight out of its fifty states with death penalty still operational. It seems the United States needs the death penalty more than ever before due to rising rate of sever violent crimes across the nation. Statistics shows that since the early nineties roughly around 355 people have been put to death through death penalty and approximately 3300 are still waiting on death row. Similarly since 1976 around 552 felons have been put to rest through death penalty across the United States (Bakken & Morris, 2010). If you break these deaths down according to the methods utilized about three hundred ninety-four by lethal injection, one hundred forty-one by electrocution, eleven by gas chamber, three by hanging, and two by firing squad. Almost half of the 1976 executions have taken place within the last five years, which includes 52 that took place this year. Even though the death penalty has brought countless gooey criminals to end, the course of death penalty that it is founded on is inconsistent one.

When a person is charged with Capital punishment we automatically think they are a dangerous criminal, but what if someone was charge simply because of their race. Well, there have been many researches done along with statistical evidence to confirm that this may be in fact the case for African-Americans. The United States Constitution was established so that every Citizen in America is guaranteed their basic rights which include; guarantee a fair process in all hearings and equal treatment under the law. African-Americans have struggled throughout our history with unfair treatment and equality. For example, the decades of slavery and the struggle of passing the equal voting rights bill in 1965. This may have passed us, but many African-Americans are still dealing with racial discrimination and this time it’s with the Criminal Justice system in particular, Capital Punishment. There have been intensive studies and evidence coming up showing how race can in fact play a major role when determining if you get a sentence to Capital Punishment or not, even if you are in fact innocent. We are to believe with our Constitution, bill of rights, and laws that every citizen no matter what race you are will be treated equally fair and justice will hopefully be served, but throughout our history up until now we are finding out that ultimately what will decide the outcome of a citizens fair and equal trial is the color of their skin.

Aristotle once said “the generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.” Capital punishment has been intertwined in United States history for centuries with a number of crimes that could lead to the death penalty if convicted, many of them are some form of murder. Since 1977, three thousand and ninety-five defendants have been on death row and of that, only one thousand thirty eight defendants have actually been executed. But the perilous question is whether or not the defendants were sentenced based on solely the facts and nature of the crime or crimes, or were there other contributing factors that influenced the severity of the verdict. There are several social controversies that surround the people who are sent to death row, predominately bias and discrimination issues which are based on ethnicity, gender, and mental health.

The American judicial system is not perfect, and its flaws sometimes bare adversely on the people of this society. For instance, just because someone is labeled a criminal, does not always necessitate the fact that they are a criminal. Brian Gilmore argues this point when he mentioned that within the past 30 years, 102 innocent individuals have been acquitted from death row in America. He says that those individuals were either not released due to legal technicalities or because evidence was lost. “These men and women did not commit their crimes. Yet somehow, they were arrested, convicted, and sentenced to die, and some came awfully close to execution” Gilmore claimed. Unfortunately, it seems as though mistakes such as this one occur far too often; then, they eventually go unnoticed as we forget that those people, criminals or not, are human just like us. Considering the large window of feasible error associated with the death penalty, it is best that Americans make every effort to eliminate the intentional practice of capital punishment on criminals.

PHILADELPHIA – The death penalty has been controversial issue in the United States since the 1976 Supreme Court case that legalized it. Since the death penalty was ruled constitutional, the debate on whether race affects the courts decision has been in major debate. In 1998, the Death Penalty Information Center published The Death Penalty in Black and White which examined the death penalty sentences for 667 murder convictions between 1983 and 1993 in Philadelphia courts. The findings of the study present that there could be a relationship between the race of the defendant, race of their victim, and in the death penalty sentence.

For the second article, “Imprisonment vs. The Death Penalty,” the type of sampling used in this study is purposive or judgmental sampling. Purposive sampling uses judgment to select cases and have a very specific purpose in mind (Neuman, 2009, p. 90). In this analysis, measurements of imprisonment, execution, and homicide were used from figures that were issued by the Federal Bureaus of Prisons and Investigation (Bailey, 1977). The study examined the how the concurrent deterrent effect of imprisonment and execution on homicide rates were governing the many socioeconomic and demographic factors that were linked to homicides.

In his paper, “The Minimal Invasion Argument Against the Death Penalty”, Hugo Adam Bedau argues against the death penalty. Bedau’s purpose is to convince people to favor the lifetime imprisonment over the death penalty with an argument that had been previously used by other authors called “The minimal Invasion Argument”, which he considers to be “the best argument against the death penalty”(Bedau, 4). In this paper I will describe Bedau’s argument and show how he has some weaknesses addressing the concept of the minimal invasion argument by ignoring what in my opinion is the main reason why the death penalty has not been abolished; this reason being our incapacity as humans to “define” our environment. When

Capital punishment has been one of the most controversial issues in American history. Its complex history demonstrates how controversial the subject is. Capital punishment is the verdict of execution as a punishment for a person or persons convicted of committing a crime. In 1972, the Supreme Court determined that capital punishment violated the 8th Amendment of the United States Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. However, this ruling did not last for long. In 1976, the court reestablished capital punishment as a legitimate means for punishment for criminals convicted of heinous crimes (Williams). Since that time, 1,271 people have been executed as a result of a guilty verdict. Yet, 138 people in 26 states have

The death penalty to all kind of rapist has always been one of the most hotly debatable issues among the societies. Everybody including the politicians, religious heads, media commentators, women’s rights activists, with a voice heard or unheard have an opinion it. Can death penalty check the occurrence of a heinous crime like rape? Death penalty is define as punishment of execution. Meanwhile, all kind of rapist means all type of person who commit rapes (Oxford University Press, 2013). The death penalty is conduct by two ways- Hang-strangled to death and electric chair which will give a shock punishment to the executant until he died. The recent article from the Business Time proof that this case is still being discussed.

The death penalty in my country does not exist. I think the death penalty in my country should exist as there are very dangerous criminals who are willing to do anything for money such as killing people, there are also many drug dealers who fill the streets with drugs and make it more and more easy to buy drugs because they simply never die prisoners and make it from inside the prison handle everything; I think for drug traffickers, rapists and murderers there should be death penalty in my country, so there are fewer of them on the streets because they are afraid of the death penalty. The death penalty is the worst thing that can happen to a criminal but I think that when someone does something bad to society or country he deserves the death penalty, that person in my opinion will never change always going to have that mentality of do evil or earn easy money. On the other hand I think the death penalty should exist in every country in the world because there are very bad criminals in all parts of the world. I also think that every person should have a second chance to be good and normal in society and the world person, but some people do not deserve this second chance and they should have death penalty in my country.

The cause of the death penalty more often then not is politically inspired. Fear has long been a favored method for controlling the population. In the case of the execution of those found guilty of murder in developed countries such as The USA , where the motivation is simply political. More votes are gained by appealing to the sense of justice exhibited in the lower educated classes than are to be gained by appealing to those that are more educated and trained in the exercise of reasoning. It is one of the failings of democracy. The effect of the death penalty is that if a person is a murderer he or she has nothing to lose by killing to cover their crime. No murderer commits a crime and intends to do