The Last Meal Essay

Capital punishment has been a controversial issue that still exists in America today. Capital punishment is a law passed by the government to punish any individual that has been convicted of committed a heinous crime. The death penalty has been a method used throughout history as punishment for criminals. The punishment also known as the death penalty is a scheduled execution, which would be done with lethal injection. The reason why this punishment is chosen is because when crimes are committed that shock the conscience, the immediate emotional reaction is to retaliate with severe punishment (Schnurbush 2016). The death penalty is debated when it is brought up, opinions vary from one group of people to another, one side says the execution is murder, and the other saying that it is justice being done. Each side presents valid arguments to why people should be for it or against it; people’s opinions are formed by personal beliefs.

The death penalty is the ultimate expression of state power. Although there are laws placed to maintain equal justice among each state, these laws are enforced by human of some race. The significant relationship between race and public support for the death penalty has been questioned for years. When doing research, act of using the death penalty has been racially inflected among whites and blacks throughout history. This was due to racism. However, the promise of equality in America has struck society into believing race is invisible. It is important for people interested in the sociology or psychology of death and dying to understand race matters when discussing the support for the death penalty. They are informed about the social problem

Michael Pollan opens his New York Times article “Unhappy Meals“with a rather ambiguous statement, “Eat food, Not too much, Mostly Plants”. Pollan gives the “average Joe” a new perspective on what food really is in this article. But in reality it’s not a new spin rather a throwback on a time trusted take on food, but I’m getting ahead of myself now. He does this starting off, by giving his rule of thumb, “if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims.” A rather odd claim I thought at first. It seems to go against everything that we have ever learned about nutrition. I have regularly found myself going out of my way to find foods that make such claims. So why

Society needs to change the eye for an eye mentality in order for civilization to advance past the revenge philosophy that leads to an endless cycle of violence (ACLU, 2012). The American Civil Liberties Union (2012) says that capital punishment is a violation of civil liberties and goes against everything that our democratic system stands for. The death penalty system in the United States is applied in an unfair manner against people based on how much money they have and the race of the victim (ACLU, 2012). African Americans are more likely to be executed than white people, especially if their victim was white (ACLU, 2012).

Stoning is one of the earliest murder weapons used by humans as a form of social justice within communities. This arrangement of punishment always occurs

The death penalty is one of the most controversial issues on American soil. Blacks are more likely to face the death penalty than whites in the commission of identical crimes(CNN, 2014). The history of capital punishment dates back to the days before Christ. The Old Testament adage 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' has survived throughout the ages despite the New Testament's rendition of 'thou shall not kill'. Today's American victims endure a more demure of style of cruel and unusual punishment; death by lethal injection has replaced the barbaric traditions of the past.

For centuries capital punishment has been used to “punish” criminals for a severe enough crime that they committed. It dates back to hundreds of years ago and has been enacted in many different countries, some that still have it today. Death penalty/capital punishment is the punishment of death an offender receives after having a court hearing and being convicted of a crime (ProCon.org, 2008). Once someone receives a death penalty sentence, they go on death row awaiting their execution. For a very long time, the controversy regarding whether or not the death penalty is ethical or just has been a topic of debate. I believe that the

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.

Abolitionist states seem unlikely to adopt capital statutes, and most death penalty states conducting executions seem equally unlikely to eliminate the punishment. Similarly, states where the death penalty is used frequently, such as Texas, seem certain to continue doing so, while those states that use it infrequently., such as California, seems unlikely to begin frequent use (Hill, 2014).

While the topic can be overwhelming and complex, it is important to study the racist institution of the death penalty because execution is the ultimate expression of which individuals are valued by our society and which are considered dispensable. What the US expresses through its executions carries some racist undertones when we look at the races of the persons being executed, but it takes on a clearly racial direction when we consider the race of the original murder victim. For example, "the most comprehensive study of the death penalty found that killers of whites were eleven times more likely to be condemned to death than killers of African- Americans."3 On the flip side, "only 31 of the over 18,000 executions in this country's history involved a white person being punished for killing a Black person."4 In capital punishment, we find the modernday counterpart to lynching. Of course, lynching often meant sporadic acts of individual racism. Selective killing today is an official, bureaucratized act of the state and therefore an official statement of what our government stands for. And what the government stands for is the most complete disempowerment possible - death - for a large number of Black individuals.

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

Even after these devastating facts, the death penalty still isn’t being put down in the United States. Thirty two of the fifty states in America allow for capital punishment. Lethal injections are the number one way to execute a criminal in America, and there are many other methods offered in select states. Texas, a state that strongly supports capital punishment, was the first state to carry out lethal injections on December 7, 1982 for the execution of Charles Brooks. Texas is also the first in the number of executions in the United States. If Texas made the death penalty illegal, the number of executions in the United States would decrease dramatically. Electrocution, lethal gas, a firing squad and even hangings still occur in the United States and are secondary options for many criminals in the country.

The death penalty, as we know it today, didn’t exist in the United States until 1976. However, the American penal system has incorporated capital punishment since the earliest settlements were founded in the early 1600’s. The first recorded execution in the United States occurred in 1608 in Jamestown, Virginia when Captain George Kendall was executed just one year after the Jamestown settlement had been established after he had been convicted of being a spy for Spain (Part I: History of the Death Penalty). Over the next 250 years, several states moved toward abolishing capital punishment altogether. While there has been serious push towards ending capital punishment, more than half of state governments within the United States cling onto their right to execute criminals who perform truly heinous crimes.

    There has been about 15,760 executions in the United States since 1700, (http://time.com/deathpenalty/), but that is counting all types of executions, for example: burning, firing squad, hanging, gas, electrocution, injection, and others. Now looking from when the capital punishment was approved in 1976 (Death penalty Information Center), only 1,448 executions have been made. The capital punishment was made for “retribution, theory which demand for ‘tooth for a tooth and eye for an eye’ … if the criminal snatches liberty, peace, and lives… [they] should also be deprived of all these,” (http://listovative.com). It was also made to help have a more pure society, by placing fear, “best method to prevent

Capital punishment has been a controversial topic in association to ethics all of its existence. Issues pertaining to the execution methods, reasonability in the relationship of punishment to the crime, who receives the death penalty, and innocence have been discussed and researched in great lengths. Capital punishment is still an active form of “deterrence” in the United States for crimes considered the worst of the worst. In this paper I will discuss the history of the death penalty. I will also disclose information on the dynamics of race, method, and court cases valid to the death penalty.