The Pros And Cons Of Capital Punishment

Capital punishment is a legal authorization to kill someone for a crime they have committed. The death penalty has been the highest form of criminal punishment in the American judicial system since the 13 colonies. It has taken the form of hanging, stoning, drowning, burning, beheading, gassing, electrocution, and injection. The taking of a man 's life as penance for criminal behavior is wrong. The moral injustice of murder, the cruelty of execution, and the death of innocent men are all concerns that make the death penalty wrong. Our society has taught children that violence is not the answer and yet our highest form of punishment is executing someone which does not solve anything, nor does it fix a problem. The United States should abolish the death penalty due to execution of innocent people, excessive cost and it is against the US constitution.

The death penalty is unconstitutional and violates numerous amendments. Capital punishment violates the 5th amendment because it violates the due process clause by denying the opportunity for exoneration. Since the process of an execution can immobilize a person from being able to speak if they are in pain it is viewed that the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment which violates the 8th amendment. The violation of the 8th amendment also applies to juveniles and mentally retarded criminals because they do not have the capacity to understand that the crime they committed was a societal wrong. Statistically, the amount of people who are convicted are generally from the same societal class. Due to this evidence, it was decided that the death penalty violates the 14th amendment because those who cannot afford adequate lawyers are not represented equally under the law.

Although there is no disagreement that the cost of the former is high, life without parole is accumulatively higher given the expenses for food, health care and other things that the government has to pay for to sustain the lives of incarcerated individuals serving life. The death penalty doesn’t violate the Eighth Amendment which forbids government from imposing excessive bail, unusual punishments, including torture and fines and cruel.

The debate on whether capital punishment is an effective way to prevent or reduce crime is a source of constant controversy. Supporters of capital punishment believe that it can be used to prevent future crimes. People against this topic, on the other hand, think that “an eye for an eye” mentality is barbaric and goes against basic human morals.

Death penalty is also known as capital punishment or execution. Societies from all over the world have used this sentence at one point in history, in order to avenge criminals. Most common reasons for being sentenced to death were war crimes, war treason, murder and espionage. Back then, the capital punishment was almost always accompanied by torture, and executions were public. The most used execution method was by hanging. If an inmate chooses the electric chair it takes anywhere between 2 min and 15 minutes. The criminal receives a jolt between 500 and 2000 volts for every 30 seconds, attending doctor waits for body to cool after each bolt and check if the heart is still breathing. While in some societies, violent death penalties are still being employed – like shooting, hanging, electric chair and gas chamber – in most countries, these have been replaced with a painless method – the lethal injection. When the person is put to death for the death penalty they use a lethal injection execution, in most cases. Sodium thipal makes the person go deeply unconscious but unable to feel himself being paralyzed from the “pancuronium bromide”. On death row an inmate waited an average of 15 years between sentencing and execution but a quarter of inmates die on death row from natural cases. The time has come to make punishment fit the crime, too oppose lethal injection, but not because these untried new drugs might obituary cause pain, but cause confusion, lethal injection conflates

To put in other words, death penalty is a violation of the eighth amendment. The Constitution states, “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted,” (www.lawcornell.edu/constitution/eight.ammendment). Over 120 years, there has been 276 botched executions, which means that the execution went wrong in several ways, making the inmates suffer, (www.deathpenalty.org). Of the 276, there has been 75 botched lethal injections, the execution rate for botched inmates is 7.12% (deathpenaltyinfo.org).

Two hours. That’s how long it took Joseph Wood, an inmate at Florence State Prison in Arizona, to die to a lethal injection. Joseph Wood is not the first to die to a botched injection, which is thought to be a “humane” process of executing America’s worst criminal offenders. Many other people across the states are victims to the harsh and provenly inhumane laws of capital punishment. Cases like these prove why capital punishment is wrong, and should be removed from the laws of every state. Capital punishment is an inhumane punishment which is dealt from a broken and sometimes blatantly racist system, and is an economic burden on the states that administer it.

Capital punishment has been a sentence for many years, but it dates back to Eighteenth Century B.C. During this time there was 25 crimes that could be committed that would result in the death penalty. The most common forms of the Capital Punishment were hanging, beheading, stoning, and other vicious forms of death(https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/part-i-history-death-penalty). Eventually Capital Punishment was reinstated, which only sentenced criminals to death in the case of “ aircraft hijacking… a drug-related drive-by shooting, murder during a kidnapping, murder for hire, and genocide”(https://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004927). There is of course plenty of other capital offenses that will result in the death penalty, but these are the most common. With this sentence comes quite a few drawbacks when it comes to the political side of it. To understand what the most significant issues political leaders face when it comes to Capital punishment, first it’s crucial to know what Capital punishment is. Capital punishment, also known as the Death Penalty, is a terminal punishment given by the state, and is sentenced to someone who has been convicted of an intensely cruel criminal offense. Capital Punishment is an intricate issue, but the main questions imposed are what is the problem, how does it directly affect the political process, and why its more significant than other worldly issues?

In the world, if anyone does murder then he gets punishment1 in the form of life imprisonment or capital punishment. A person gets capital punishment when he kills another human. Some people argue that capital punishment is cruel and it should not be used. Life imprisonment is given for the serious crime of murder, rape and other more, in this type of crime criminal have to spend rest of his life in jail. But some people argue that life imprisonment is better than capital punishment. In the world, the debate is going on at many places that imprisonment is better or capital punishment as punishment is better. Does capital punishment save an innocent life? Does capital punishment is reducing crime rates more than imprisonment? By considering the question, it is clear that imprisonment is better than capital punishment because it saves innocent. If any innocent get life imprisonment then he is alive and later on it can prove that he is innocent. But if he gets the death penalty and later on it is proved that he is innocent then it is useless because he is dead. And Katz, Levitt and Shustorovich (2003) suggest that if the quality of life in the prison is low then criminals will be demotivated to do the crime. So by considering this, one can say that imprisonment is better than capital punishment.

Pope Benedict XVI once said “When every man lives without law, every man lives without freedom.” This is true everywhere, but it is taken as principle in the United States. The document defining the framework of this government even stresses both of these issues. The United States prides itself on its legal system. The first thing that comes to mind when talking about US courtrooms is “innocent until proven guilty,” which is thrown around quite a bit, but in reality, being blameless until the court has proven you have done something wrong is a revolutionary idea. The United States Constitution guarantees everyone equal protection under the law, along with guaranteed privileges such as the right to a jury trial, the right not to self incriminate, and the right that no cruel and unusual punishment will be received. However, what if one of these was not necessarily true? This is exactly what a reasonable amount of people have been arguing since the 1950s (Capital Punishment: Should Capital Punishment be allowed in the United States?). More specifically, these people have been arguing that the death penalty should be abolished. While the death penalty has been present in United States legal history since before this country was founded, the first execution being in 1608, there are many opponents of capital punishment who believe that this practice should be done away with for a whole host of reasons (Issitt). In today’s society, the use of the death penalty has become a subject

Capital punishment, or the death penalty, has been a part of the American Justice System since the begging, but for years it raised much controversy over its social issues, questioning its validity and fairness. The death penalty is the sentence of execution given to someone convicted of a capital crime such as murder or treason. Many civilizations and early societies used the death penalty before in history. Common explanations to be sentenced include war crimes, treason, murder, and espionage. Formerly, capital punishment was accompanied by torture and performed publically. It was often believed to be unprejudiced because it is retribution towards criminals who committed heinous acts. In contrast, it is currently a controversial debate whether or not the death penalty is socially acceptable as many see it is inhumane. The United States currently has five forms of execution include: hanging, beheading, chair electrocution, lethal injection, lethal gas, and firing squad (Gray). Each of them is cruel in their own way. Punishing a person with death is outdated, barbarous, and many nations evolved so they reprimanded this penalty years ago. Government sanctioned capital punishment is wrong and it should be abolished because it could potentially kill the innocent, denies people of rehabilitation, denies a citizen’s right to live, and overall does not benefit society.

The death penalty is put into place when a person of some sort commits murder or rape or something to an extreme extent, is lethally injected and put to death because of the crime.

As of August 2017, capital punishment is legal in 31 US states. As of April 28, 2017, since 1973, 1,458 people have been executed in total. The problem lies in the fact that, despite counter arguments, there are many flaws that lie in the concept of capital punishment. The practice of the death penalty inadvertently manages to disprove any argument in support of it and in the end, is only used to set a warped sense of false justice.

What in the world would be the punishment for the most brutal killers beside the death penalty? Historically, people have been murdering people mostly because of either how popular they are or how wealthy they are. Such as In In Cold Blood, the author stated that the two killers killed the entire family in one night intentionally just because of hatred or thievery. The judges of the court must give Dick and Perry Smith the death penalty because the most brutal killers should be eliminated in order to assure that one day these killers cannot come out of prison and commit another crime.

Capital Punishment we can improve our punishments and come up with better ideas there are also other factors which make it feasible to switch over to different types of punishment. Among these reasons to switch are the Cost, People and overall morals that lead me to believe we should not continue this practice as it could corrupt us into other ideas that would have started all because of Capital Punishment. You should take the time to examine capital punishment for what it really is and see the history and what makes it work to really see why it doesn’t make sense.