The United States Should Abolish The Death Penalty

While some states chose to reinstate capital punishment, they reformed to limit how harsh the death penalty was and the terms in which it is given. “Pennsylvania adopted a law in 1794 to distinguish between first- and second-degree murder and limited the death penalty to murders committed with premeditation or in the course of carrying out another felony (first-degree murder). In 1846, Louisiana abolished the mandatory death penalty and authorized the option of sentencing a capital offender to life imprisonment rather than to death, a reform universally adopted in the U.S. during the following century.” (Capital Punishment.) The most common general offenses that result in capital punishment are things such as espionage, treason, and various forms of murder.

As all of us know that the death penalty is not a good thing, but it is a great way of reform and preventing something happening more than once. All of the US states should not abolish the death penalty.

In recent discussions of the death penalty, a controversial issue has been whether or not to abolish the death penalty. On the one hand, some argue that the death penalty should remain illegal. From this perspective, the death penalty rids the United States of criminals who have committed horrible crimes. On the other hand, however, others argue that the death penalty should be illegal in all fifty states. From this perspective, the death penalty could also send an innocent person to their death. According to President Obama race is a factor, at least in his opinion. He stated, “In the application of the death penalty in this country, we have seen significant problems – racial bias, uneven application of the death penalty, situations

How would you like to be put into a situation where you or a loved one is innocently executed by the death penalty? I know that I wouldn’t. Seeing this, the death penalty is a very controversial issue in which I believe that it should be banned from its allowance in the United States. The three biggest reasons for this are that innocent people are wrongly executed, it is also a form of revenge, and mental illness plagues some victims of the death penalty

Statistics show that at least 4 percent of people who receive the death penalty are innocent. According to listverse.com, a woman by the name of Wanda Lopez was murdered at a gas station. The police went searching for the culprit. They eventually found a man by the name of Carlos De Luna. De Luna told the police that he was innocent and also offered to tell the name of the person he saw at the gas station. On December 7, 1989, Carlos De Luna was executed. The death penalty should be taken away because it is unfair to kill a person for committing a crime. Not all crimes are worth someone’s life being taken away. Others may argue that it gives the victims and their families closure. Many people feel that the death penalty is the only solution for the criminal. They also feel that the death penalty is the only thing that the criminal will fear. Yet, life in prison is the best alternative for the death penalty. The death penalty also costs millions of dollars. Money which can be used for the victims’ families and people in need. The color of your skin can also enhance your chances of being executed.

Death sentences have decreased by 75% since the 1990s, but so has public support for this unethical punishment. Though the death penalty is not used as often today, there are still many flaws. Majority of the time, what should be irrelevant factors in deciding the verdict of a case, like the quality of legal representation and race, usually play a larger role than the severity of the crime. Ultimately, the death penalty should be outlawed, as it is bias and costly.

The short story, A Death Row in Texas talks about two men who were pen pals for years. Steve Earl finds some shocking news, that his friend Jonathan Noble is going to die in a certain amount of days. When he got the terrifying news Earl drives to Oklahoma, McAlester, the jail Noble is at and stays to watch all the wrong things that is about to happen. Jonathan’s the death penalty consists of being, “Pumped full of chemicals that will collapse his lungs and stop his heart forever.” Not only in Earls eye, the death penalty should be abolished, but also in others who realize people can change, the consequence is too harsh, and evidence could be false.

The death penalty, it has been the argument of ethics and politics, yet there has never been an agreement on whether to abolish it or not. It has been part of the US history as well as the world history; its practice was show through cruel actions and has become the current lethal injection. It is the debate that never ends and will never end. In this debate called “Abolish the death penalty”, Diann Rust- Tierney and Barry Scheck argue for the abolishment of the death penalty, while Robert Blecker and Kent Scheidegger argue against the abolishment of the death penalty. Diann Rust- Tiereney, the executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, begins her debate by trying to prove that the death penalty is

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 has been around for thousands of years, from the codification of twenty-five laws by King Hammurabi of Babylon to today with many of our political nominees for president in support of continued use of the death penalty. Those in favor of the death penalty cite deterrence and punishment as their main reasons. However, in reality the death penalty is a drain on state and local finances, there is no evidence that is serves as a deterrent to crime, and has been shown to put the lives of innocent people in jeopardy. The death should be abolished, it has caused loss of finances, loss of life, and has un-proportionately affected the poor and the impoverished people of the United States.

B. Supporters of the death penalty argue that the death penalty provides retribution to grieving families and avenges the murder of the victim.

The death penalty has been used as a form of punishment against crime for hundreds of years. However, in the last one hundred years, 140 nations have abolished the death penalty, such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Having the whole nation abolish the death penalty would be difficult because we have a federalist system in which states can make their own laws, but what about the death penalty in California? The Death Penalty will be on this year’s ballot and has been a controversial issue for many years now, because of how much it costs and no one has been executed on death row in California since 2006, and the average amount of time spent on death row is 17.9 years. The Death Penalty is an issue that should finally be settled by

The death penalty is a punishment of execution for a criminal that has convicted a serious crime. Crime rates go up throughout the years, but still the death penalty is not a way to find a solution to the world’s problems. Due that the death penalty costs more than sending a criminal to prison for 40 years, does not stop any form of crime, but it just increases it, and it is not a satisfying form of punishment. Therefore, the death penalty should be removed!

Over the past 60 years, the topic regarding whether the death penalty should be abolished, has left politicians in the United States arguing back and forth. The United States remains divided, which has 32 states where the death penalty is legal and 18 states where the death penalty has been abolished (Donohue,2012). The United States has more people on death row than any other country in the world, which has the Chicago Alliance against Racist and Political Repression working on lowering the number of prisoners sentenced to death. The CAARPR was founded in 1973 to mount action against unjust treatment on individuals because of race or politics. The CAARPR has successfully campaigned for the release of many people falsely charged and sentenced to death or to long prison terms. Today, The CAARPR continues to focus on establishing civilian control of police, free political prisoners and the innocent, stop all police torture of suspects, and abolish the death penalty. The main goal that will be focused on is whether the death penalty should be abolished in the United States. The push to abolish the death penalty is an important issue to the CAARPR because of the negative impact it has on the community and for families involved. The prison population should be primarily focused on because there is not enough studies in depicting the data surrounding the unjust treatment of these individuals. The CAARPR looks to decrease police crimes, cases of injustice, and bring up

There are quite a few problems within the criminal justice system of the United States. One of these so called problems with our system of justice is the death penalty. Capital punishment in this country seems to have its pros and cons. There are more issues and complications with being sentenced to death, while the positives are minuscule. The death penalty should not be allowed in the United States, and there are many reasons for this argument.