The Pros And Cons Of Capital Punishment

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, also known as the death penalty, is the gravest punishment in the U.S. criminal justice system (Van den Haag, E., & Olin, J. M., 1986); It is the legal killing of a person guilty of committing heinous and malum in se acts against the public, such as the intentional killing of an individual, intentionally committing an act of violence knowing that it may be deadly to an individual, inflicting injury to a victim resulting in death, etc. (18 U.S. Code § 3591). According to the U.S. Code,

Most Americans are in favor of ending somebody’s life. Mark Berman’s article in the Washington Post claims that the majority of Americans support capital punishment. The Death Penalty Information Center, an organization that records national polls and studies on capital punishment, put the number of supporters at sixty-two percent. However, only about a quarter of those supporters believe that there are enough safeguards in the system to prevent the execution of an innocent life. Americans’ faiths in the legal system have historically been the basis of arguments for and against the death penalty.

According to former president Jimmy Carter, “There has never been any evidence that the death penalty reduces capital crimes or that crimes increased when executions stopped. Tragic mistakes are prevalent...It is clear that there are overwhelming ethical, financial, and religious reasons to abolish the death penalty.”

There are around 3,000 people that are sent to jail/prison every day, and costs $24,000 a year to incarcerate them. There are lots of morbid ways to execute someone who has allegedly committed a crime: lethal injection, hanging, electrocution, gas chamber, and firing squad. Though it’s a major controversial topic in America, some believe that anyone who commits a crime should have their life confiscated from them. Prisoners shouldn’t be executed no matter how cruel, wicked, and sinful the crime was. Most people can say that prisoners are supposed to have their life confiscated from them because they violated the law which leads them to being punished, and won’t make the same mistake as they did. But isn’t life sacred? Capital punishment is debated as either a justice or an inhumane act. The debate whether the individual should die or not is either an inhumane act or it brings justice. Does the U.S. entirely know if they’re executing the prisoner who was waiting on death row be innocent or not? Can we be a civilized society, even when we kill our own citizens? Capital punishment jeopardizes innocent people’s lives, violates the eight amendment of the Bill of Rights and the fifth and the third article of the Declaration of Human Rights (DHR).

A Social problem can be defined in several ways: by an influential group which defines a social condition to be threatening its values; when the condition affects a large number of people; and when the condition can be remedied by collective action. The subject of this discussion is the death penalty, also known as capital punishment, as a social problem(Sullivan, 2016). Capital punishment is a highly debated topic, and issues lie within the suggestions on both sides of the problem, whether it's to place more criminals on death row or to replace the death penalty with life without parole. But one solution which can help solve problems on both sides is to devote some time to the restructuring and purpose of our prison systems. If prison became more about rehabilitation instead of punishment, many of these problems could be solved.

Capital punishment is a failed and outdated government practice. The death penalty denies citizens of civil liberties and is in direct conflict with the values of the democratic system. American citizens have fallen victim to the penalty of execution and it is time we demand action. For centuries capital punishment has been the subject for criticism; according to Deathpenalty.procon.org, back in the late seventeen hundreds an Italian Jurist name Beccaria, "The first prominent European to call for an end to the death penalty, Beccaria is considered the founder of the modern abolition movement. He published a prolific article about Crimes and Punishments; it was the first key study of the criminal justice system as it functioned in eighteenth-century Europe; it was also the first to call for the abolishment of capital punishment. It still stands as the greatest significant attack on the death penalty ever published. With that being said, today we are still going through this continuous battle to abolish capital punishment.

There has always been a question about whether capital punishment deters crime. The laws of the United states are founded upon Christian beliefs. Most people who believes that capital punishment is constitutional, are individuals that is for capital punishment out of vengeance “justice”. It does not matter if the individual who believes in capital punishment is Republican or Democrat (believers of this punishment are on both sides).

Should murder be the solution to murder? For 31 of the 50 United States, the answer is “yes,” through the legal process of capital punishment. Capital punishment, or more commonly known as the death penalty, refers to the process of sentencing offenders convicted to death due to the most serious crimes, along with carrying out that sentence (“Capital Punishment”). Methods of capital punishment include lethal injections, firing squad, electrocution, lethal gas, and hanging (“States and Capital Punishment”). The most common procedure, lethal injection, is the process of injecting one or multiple drugs for the purpose of immediate death. Moreover, the death penalty has been executed since the beginning of societies. However, humans have tried to limit the number of people executed or even eliminate executions overall. This may be due to people believing the death is short and painless when the reality is that often the death penalty has complications and results in brief struggling from the offender. Subsequently, the death penalty should be restricted or eliminated because there is a less permanent alternative, the death penalty has proven racist, and the death penalty does not deter crime.

Introduction and Background When someone takes a person’s life, is it then human justice to take another person’s life If capital punishment, or death penalty as it is also called, should be legal or not is a constantly current question in countries all over the world. Capital punishment is a process whereby a person is put to death by the state, or the community, and it´s a penalty that has existed as long as mankind. The death penalty is not always used to protect a murderer from committing new crimes. It can also be used to take revenge on the murderer or his family. Methods for execution used all over the world is for example gas chamber, hanging, lethal injection, and electrocution. Today, there are 36 countries that have retained the death penalty in active use and one of them is USA. Since 1976, 1,300 people were executed in 13 different US states. Sweden abolished the death penalty almost a hundred years ago. The death penalty in the world should be abolished immediately. I think that it is very immoral and non-democratic. On the other hand you can mean that there are many people who do not deserve to live, but it is a lot of people having caused the death of other people, and still deserve to live. Can you give them their life back? No, you can´t! Innocent People are Sometimes Executed Firstly, it is shown that many people do not get a fair trial as several countries in the world do not comply with international rules. In trials, evidence are being withheld, and the

Meet Jimmy Lee Gray. In 1968 he murdered his fiancé by cutting her throat, he only served seven years of his twenty year sentence when he was given parole. Not long after this he struck again, this time it was even worse. One June 27, 1976 he kidnapped a girl, took her to the woods where he raped her and attempted to drown her. When drowning did not work he broke her neck with his boot. Her name was Daressa Jean Seales and she was three years old.

Capital punishment is "the legally authorized killing of someone as punishment for a crime" (Webster). Capital punishment is called to action when someone commits an explicit degree of a crime. The act has not been proven to be effective, violates the 8th amendment of the United States constitution, and is unnecessarily costly in its execution. Based on these claims, it is clear that capital punishment is destructive to America and its citizens.

The United States is considered as one of the most developed nations in the world. The United States is often linked with words such as equality, freedom, opportunity, democracy, and so on. These words used to describe the United States are all great American virtues. One practice that can also be linked to the United States, that is usually not mentioned and is a terrible reality, is state sanctioned murder or capital punishment.

In response to the protests against capital punishment, supporters of the law have been outspoken about the positive economic and social effects it has on the nation. Victims’ rights activists, traditionalists, and 80% of the Republican Party is in favor of capital punishment. Victim’s rights activists believe that families of victims that were murdered should be able to decide whether or not the killer deserves to live or die because they took that right away from their family member. Traditionalists have the mindset that execution has been around as long as we can remember, so why change something that has worked? And the states in the southern region are more conservative, and majority of the states in that region are the ones that still have capital punishment in place.

The death penalty is one of the most hotly deliberated topics in the United States. Also referred to as capital punishment, it is the punishment of execution, legally administered to someone convicted of a capital crime. Although the number fluctuates from year to year, 1,465 executions have been performed since the year 1976. Those opposed to the death penalty would say that number is 1,465 cases too high, while proponents would say it is too low.