Running head: The death penalty
The death penalty should be abolished as a form of punishment.
Johnathon Aaron
Excelsior
The death penalty should be abolished as a form of punishment.
This paper intends to shine some light on the death penalty in order to help the reader understand what issues face the system today and what problems can be corrected. This paper achieves this by: (1) pointing out the wrongful sentencing of innocent people and the use of DNA testing in attaining their freedom; (2) emphasizing the unjustness of the Capital Punishment system due to the arbitrary, racial and geographically biased nature of the process; And also (3) It shows that the evidence backing up deterrence as a major benefit of the death penalty
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Georgia. This was a case of a poor, black, man from a southern state that was prone to issuing the death penalty. The outcome of this trial was a de facto moratorium between 1967 and 1977 where no executions were conducted in the United’s states during this time (Schmalleger, 2011).
Deterrence is exaggerated and also obtainable through other ways.
There are two possible ways to examine deterrence. First, it can be viewed the same way that most people understand it by; the Punishment of one criminal will deter multiple others from committing similar gruesome acts. This view has been brought up in a couple of study’s: the 2001 study by Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Paul Rubin at Emory University who concluded that on average one single execution results in 18 fewer murders; an earlier study was conducted by Viscusi in 1993 which pegged the average deterrence at 14. Most of the fundamental testing and deterrence hypotheses used leading up to the present were produced by Isaac Erlich between 1975 and 1977. (Erlich 1975) although a valiant attempt to survey something as complex as this topic, most of these types of data analysis are proven false due to factors such as, failure to include states that do not carry a death penalty; and that some studies have just been methodologically flawed. I
Elliot Spitzer states, “Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it, even though we don 't like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is, at the end of the day, the most compelling, persuasive, and winning argument against a death penalty.” Although the Death Penalty is meant to kill the ones that have murdered, many innocent people have been executed due to the ignorance of facts during trial. Since this has come to me and my partner’s attention, we are resolved that The United States should change its penal code to abolish the death penalty. The Death Penalty is execution following someone’s conviction of murder or any other serious crime. Abolish is to end the observance or effect of. The Penal Code is a set of criminal laws of a particular country, society, etc. Our courts are not steady, which is why we need to abolish the death penalty.
The legitimacy of the use of capital punishment has been tarnished by its widespread misuse , which has clouded our judgment regarding the justifiability of the death penalty as a punitive measure. However, the problems with capital punishment, such as the “potential error, irreversibility, arbitrariness and racial skew" , are not a basis for its abolition, as the world of homicide suffer from these problems more acutely. To tackle this question, one must disregard the currently blemished universal status quo and purely assess the advantages and disadvantages of the death penalty as a punitive measure. Through unprejudiced examination of the death penalty and its consequential impacts, it is evident that it is a punishment that effectively serves its retributive, denunciatory, deterrent, and incapacitative goals.
The debate on whether or not the death penalty should be abolished has been ongoing for quite a long period of time. While there are those who believe that the death penalty does not serve its intended purpose, proponents of the same are convinced that the relevance of the same cannot be overstated and hence it should not be abolished. In this text, I examine the arguments for and against the death penalty.
I would like about whether or not the United States should abolish the death penalty. The United States should not abolish this because those who commit a capital felony which is punishable by imprisonment or death, should serve a capital punishment which is the death penalty. Many believe that certain crimes such as rape and murder should punishable by the death penalty. Although many also see it as inhumane, many also view murder and rape as inhumane. One can view this as part of Hammburi’s Code law that states “An eye for an eye.” Capital punishment has ben around for thousands of years; beginning even before the ancient Greeks and Romans. At that time, there were many different ways to carry out capital punishment such as, beheading, stoning and electrocution (PBS).
The death penalty is the ultimate punishment. There is no harsher punishment than death itself. This nation, the United States of America, is currently one of fifty-eight nations that practice the death penalty, if one commits first-degree murder as of 2012. People that believe in the death penalty also believe that it will deter murders. In this paper I will argue that the death penalty does not deter criminals and that this nation should outlaw the practice.
Albert Einstein, a theoretical physicist and philosopher of science, once said, no problem can be solved with the same level of thinking that created it (Einstein). The intelligent man expressed his ideas clearly that if a killer kills someone and we also kill the killer then what would be the difference between us and the killer because we both are killers. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 31 States in the United States allow the death penalty and 19 states do not allow the death penalty (“Deterrence”). The death penalty should be abolished in our society because it is not an effective crime deterrent, it puts a strain on our economy, it may result in the loss of innocent lives, and it is racial discrimination.
The Death penalty practices are one of the controversial issues that have been over debate in the United States in the past years (Anckar 7). Individuals, groups, and scholars have raised a number of the political spectrum about the application of the death penalty as the best method of reduces and controlling criminal activities in the society (Steiker, and Jordan 197). According to a number of social studies and reports, it is clear that capital punishment has been used unfairly against minority groups, against the poor as well as against individuals of particular ethnic, religious as well as racial groups in the United States (Anckar 11). This indicates that the death penalty is mostly applied discriminatory and badly in the society. Despite this, there are also those who argued that the death penalty is one of the best methods that can be used in reducing criminal activity and crime rates in the society (Steiker, and Jordan 193). This is because capital punishment usually allows the elimination of criminals in the society completely. There are also various religious beliefs and political policies in various countries globally that support death penalty as the best way of punishing stubborn believers and individuals in the society (Anckar 21).
let us analyze one of the often given purposes of capital punishment: deterrence. It is understandable that the criminal justice system, in wanting to ensure greater safety for its citizens, would want to deter crime. Having less violent crimes means less people will get hurt. However, this argument carries a flaw; there is little evidence to indicate that capital punishment is serving this purpose in jurisdictions where the death penalty is carried out. As a matter of fact, in the United States, some of the highest murder rates in the country occur in states where the most executions are carried out. This does not necessarily mean that murder rates are higher as a ''result'' of capital punishment; however, it goes to show that capital punishment
Confronting head-on two of the most prominent objections to the death penalty is the object of this paper: Is the death penalty a miscarriage of justice? And Does it Deter Crime?
Capital crime is something that is meant for people that are found guilty of committing a serious crime, such as murder, rape, or theft. These are offences that should not be taken lightly but by killing the offender, the government is carrying about the action that they are trying to prevent. Also, the wrong person may be sentenced to death. After this person is executed, there is obviously nothing that can be done for the terrible mistake to be reversed. The death penalty should be abolished because it is more expensive than life imprisonment, numerous innocent people are condemned to death row, and it is cruel and inhumane.
The death penalty is legal in thirty-two states. I shall argue that capital punishment should be abolished in our country because it is never moral to kill a human being no matter what they have done, because it often costs more money to keep someone on death row than to keep someone in prison for life, because of the men and women who are wrongly accused of a crime they did not commit, and because death is the easy way out.
I do not agree with this statement. Given the conditions presented there is no moral reason to continue using the death penalty. In this case the death penalty cannot be said to be optimific (producing the best result) unless you hold the value of justice ahead of the value of society. To argue for this perspective requires an extremely skewed perception of value and if, as I will show, the death penalty provides no tangible benefit to society its use should be discontinued.
This essay explores the ‘death penalty’ and why it no longer exists in the United Kingdom, but does in other countries worldwide, and whether or not it should be reintroduced. Capital punishment is a practice of which criminals, when convicted of a serious crime known as a ‘capital crime’ are executed. Capital punishment was abolished in 1969 in the United Kingdom. The term capital was derived from the Latin word ‘Capitalis’, meaning the head and a ‘capital crime’ was originally punishable by the severing of the head. The death penalty dates as far back as the Ancient Laws of China, where the death penalty was established as a punishment for crimes. Focusing on the United Kingdom, before the death penalty was abolished, crimes such as rape, murder, treason, espionage and arson were considered punishable by death. In today’s day there is no crime worse than murder that can be considered punishable by death. ‘A Life for a Life’ some would say, whereas others would ‘forgive but never forget’. There are concerns that innocent people are getting convicted and later executed only to be found not guilty afterwards. For example there are southern states in America, particularly Texas, that hold the highest death penalty rates making the likelihood of convicting and executing the wrong person at its highest. Although not always used, 58 countries, worldwide, still support capital punishment as a sentence according to Amnesty International’s figures in December 2009, and, since 1985,
Throughout the history of humanity, punishments have been in place for the wrongful acts of citizens within governmental systems of all kinds. In America during the early days of the country, the death penalty was a more viable solution than it appears today due to the quality of the prisons, which couldn’t sustain prisoners long-term. (Von Drehle, 2015). Today, this is not an issue with prisons that are provided both by the state and federal governments and that are fully capable of holding offenders throughout the length of a life sentence (Von Drehle, 2015). However, many will argue that capital punishment should be eliminated. Foes of the death penalty are split into two groups with one that argues that capital punishment should and will cease based upon public support, that it doesn’t deter crime, and the current processes of executions are too costly and problematic. The other will take a more humanitarian approach and claim that it is not the role of the government to decide the fate of an individual, and that crimes punishable by death are not justifiable. Determent, morals, severity of the crime, and revenge are among the many arguments that are geared in favor of protecting a centuries old government system. These groups give more pragmatic reasons as arguments.
Capital punishment is beneficial to the community. It provides the society with a sense of security. The death penalty contains a positive influence on the future. A heavily debated topic is, “Does capital punishment deter people more than a life sentence to prison?” An explanation on why will be covered later. An issues many people have with capital punishment, is when it is just or not just. This is a topic many stray away from, because it is difficult to decide. Finding the right consequence for an action is difficult. While this paper is for the use of capital punishment, it is clearly not needed for every crime, or even every murder. Overusing capital punishment, such as using it for every murder, will negatively impact the country, and not using it has the same effect.