Ronald Post, A 53 Years Old Man Was Sentenced To Death

In this article it states what all methods are used for the death penalty. In Eight states it allows electrocution (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia). Three states it allows the gas chamber (Arizona, Missouri, and Wyoming). Three other states allow hanging (Delaware, New Hampshire, and Washington). Two other states allow the firing squad (Oklahoma and Utah), though only Oklahoma is the one that uses it. Utah allowed that option before it was banned in 2004.

The death penalty is the only suitable punishment for murderers. The death penalty insures that criminals know that if they kill they will be killed, and they are going to receive a harsh punishment. Also it could be cheaper than sentencing a prisoner to life in prison. People feel that the death penalty is too harsh of a punishment. Which that would be a harsh punishment but they took another human's life. So they need to have a harsh punishment so people know they can not get away with murder. The death penalty insures that a murderer won’t kill again.

In “How the Death Penalty Saves Lives”, written and published by David B. Mulhausen on September 29, 2014, Mulhausen speaks of the reasons why the death penalty is a proper way to bring murderers to justice. He believes that “some crimes are so heinous and inherently wrong that they demand strict penalties” (Mulhausen). Not only does he believe that the death penalty is useful to set criminals to justice, but he also believes that the enforcement of the death penalty deters crime rates.

Compared to previous uses such as firing squad, gas chambers, electric chair, and hanging, lethal injection is what the average joe would think as “most official” leaving a small window of thought for the complications and ill proof of its efficiency. The HRW combined an assortment of evidence justifying the thought that lethal injection can indeed be a painful process. In the court case Hill v. McDonough, Hill, a convicted murderer after killing a police officer, challenged Florida’s procedure for lethal injections. This brought much needed light to the discounted topic. Hill’s lawyer claimed that the three drug “mixture” may cause "wanton and gratuitous pain" that would cause him pain, Hill would be unable to express during his scheduled execution (Citation). This three drug system that was the main argument for Hill's case, contains, sodium thiopental, to sedate the inmate and put him to

As far back as one can look into human civilization, justice for a murder victim has always been by taking the life of the killer. In today’s society capital punishment is needed to defend it from further harm, bring justice and/or vengeance to the victims of the loved ones, and encourage psychological deterrence. As of today, there are thirty-two states which offer the only just punishment for a crime without parallel and eighteen states having abolished the death penalty.

Each county was responsible to carry out executions on their own until in 1923, when the state implemented a law saying executions should be done through electrocutions in Huntsville (Champagne). This violated the Eighth Amendment because the criminals felt the pain of being electrocuted. As a result, in 1977, the state required that lethal injection be the sole method of execution in Texas (Champagne). Although the lethal injection was to be painless and that it was created for the benefit of the criminal, it still violates The Eighth Amendment because it is inhumane. The crime done by the prison cannot be justified by taking the prisoner’s life. Capital punishment takes the like of a person, and what can be taken can never be taken back anymore. In 2011, the drug they used in the lethal injection had to be changed from sodium thiopental to pentobarbital because of the international attention and protestations it received in the United States (Champagne). The issues concerning pentobarbital as part of the three-drug cocktail in the lethal injection arose when officials did not want to say the source where they are getting their pentobarbital from (Dart). When Texas had to execute a man this April using new batches of pentobarbital, protestors claimed that because of the source’s lack of authenticity, it was possible that “an excessively painful execution”

Having to execute prisoners in Texas is a critical issue in our criminal justice system. The executions are carried out on capital murderers. It all started back in the 1800’s when counties carryed out their own exectution method; prisoners were hung. Than, in the1920’s the state of Texas ordered that all executions were to be carried out to Walls Unit, Huntsville for “The Electric Chair.” Ever since 1982, Texas was the first U.S state to execute with the “Lethal Injection.” The executions in Texas are carried out in various ways, but the primary way of executing inmates now is by lethal injection.

This time, the Supreme Court granted the writ of certiorari, but held that Oklahoma’s use of midazolam as the initial drug in the execution protocol, the same drug used in Clayton Lockett’s execution, did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissented, and Breyer’s strong 41 page dissent seemed to invite a facial challenge to the death penalty.

In April 29, 2014, a man by the name of Clayton Lockett was executed in Oklahoma using a three-drug lethal injection. Although the Clayton did die of the injection, his death didn't come until forty minutes after his injections. A proper procedure was to be done, so that Clayton and any other man or woman given lethal injection would go to sleep with the first injection, the kept asleep with the second, and finally killed with the last injection. In Clayton’s case, he awoke after the injection of the drugs that we suppose to render him unconscious. After his death Charles Warner and around 20 other inmates began to sue multiple state officials and stated that the lethal injection was in violation of the 8th amendment, which

Rees, the challenged the constitutionality of lethal injection been used in many states as form capital punishment for many decades. In this case the court determines whether the use of lethal injection is unconstitutional because the procedure causes cruel and unusual punishment which is prohibited by Eight Amendment of the U.S Constitution. Baze argued that lethal injection procedure violates his Eight Amendment right because it is likely to cause him substantial pain and suffering. Baze argument continues until it made his way to State Court, at this time Kentucky Supreme Court made a decision rejection Baze case. The court ruled that the state lethal injection procedure did not violate constitutional right and did not present substantial risk of pain during execution which does not violates Eight Amendment. The case went all the way to Supreme Court, but the court also ruled that Kentucky's three-drug protocol for carrying out lethal injections does not amount to cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Seven Justices wrote opinions in the case, indicating that the Court is far from a consensus about how to resolve additional challenges that are likely to

The death penalty is a punishment given to people who commit heinous crimes. Since 1976, there have been over 1,390 executions. But does that make the death penalty, necessarily, a correct and justifiable form of punishment? “The death penalty is our harshest punishment,” states Ernest van den Haag, author of “The Ultimate Punishment: a Defense.” Van den Haag, in his article, argues how the death penalty is effective and should be used. However, Jack Greenberg, James P. Gray, and Jeffery Reiman, all concur that the death penalty should not be used as a punishment for criminals. Jack Greenberg, author of “Against the American System of Capital Punishment,” argues how the death penalty is an

Inmates in Oklahoma State Penitentiary, located in McAlester, Oklahoma, sued state officials after the botched execution of Clayton Lockett on April 29, 2014 led to Lockett laying in agonizing pain for 40 minutes after receiving the lethal injection cocktail, waiting for his heart attack to kill him (Konrad, Web). Richard E. Glossip and the other death row inmates petition the Court, believing that the use of midazolam as the initial drug of execution violated the Eight Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment (S. Ct, p.1). The Supreme Court of the United States of America denied the motion in a 5-4 ruling, stating prisoners “failed to establish a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the

An Impassioned Debate: An overview of the death penalty in America depicts the facts about the eighth amendment. The eighth amendment is the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments (Masci 1). There are two significant cases that have inflamed the debate over the capital punishment, The Baze v. Reese case, and the Kennedy v. Louisiana case. The first case reveals the strong debate that the execution by lethal injection is inhuman and in violation of the eight amendment. The second case inflamed the

The problem with the death penalty is that it is a big waste of money. Yes, in some cases it can make people feel better, like they are getting revenge on the people that did the crime to their loved one or someone they know but that is really cruel. In the article, The Price of Justice it shows how the price were a few years ago and it can only of up from there “in 1988, The Miami Herald reported that the cost of the death penalty in Florida was $3.2 million per execution compared to $600,000 for life imprisonment.103 Similarly, The Dallas Morning News reported in 1992 that the trials and appeals of a capital case alone cost Texas $2.3 million per case on average”. Making the criminal sit in a jail cell that is not that big with other bad people is more of a punishment then just killing them. And it is a lot cheaper to do it that way as well. The cost of the death penalty is not reasonable because the state can’t even perform the death penalty the right way. And we can use the money for better things for our states and for our society so we can improve our comity’s so

An issue that has continually created tension in today's society is whether the death penalty serves as a justified and valid form of punishment. Whenever the word "death penalty" comes up, extremists from both sides start yelling out their arguments. One side says deterrence, the other side says there's a potential of executing an innocent man; one says justice, retribution, and punishment; the other side says execution is murder. Crime is an evident part of society, and everyone is aware that something must be done about it. Most people know the threat of crime to their lives, but the question lies in the methods and action in which it should be dealt with. In several parts of