It focuses especially on Texas, the leading state in the number of executions. An online source indicates the following evidences. Conclusion The Chief Editor of Criminal Law Review, Chen Xingliang, writes that there is a consensus among the scholars that contribute to his publication; and those scholars "…are in favor of strict limitations on the death penalty in order to eventually abolish it" p. I don't want capital punishment essay topics do this anymore, capital punishment essay topics. Revulsion at the duty to supervise and witness executions is one reason why so many prison wardens — however unsentimental they are about crime and criminals — are opponents of capital punishment. Those for the death penalty in the movie are represented by Ramunda who becomes a strong advocate for the death penalty and in many instances, is a counterpart of Cushing. Supporters of the death….
INTRODUCTION TO THE “MODERN ERA” OF THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE UNITED STATES
Jump to navigation Skip capital punishment essay topics. The American Civil Liberties Union believes the death penalty inherently violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the guarantees of due process of law and of equal protection under the law. Furthermore, capital punishment essay topics, we believe that the state should not give itself the right to kill human beings — especially when it kills with premeditation and ceremony, in the name of the law or in the name of its people, and when it does so in an arbitrary and discriminatory fashion.
Capital punishment is an intolerable denial of civil liberties and is inconsistent with the fundamental values of our democratic system, capital punishment essay topics. The death penalty is uncivilized in theory and unfair and inequitable in practice. Through litigation, legislation, and advocacy against this barbaric and brutal institution, we strive to prevent executions and seek the abolition of capital punishment. The death penalty system in the US is applied in an unfair and unjust manner against people, largely dependent on how much money they have, the skill of their attorneys, race of the victim and where the crime took place. People of color are far more likely to be executed than white people, especially if thevictim is white.
The death penalty is a waste of taxpayer funds and has no public safety benefit. The vast majority of law enforcement professionals surveyed agree that capital punishment does not deter capital punishment essay topics crime; a survey of police chiefs nationwide found they rank the death penalty lowest among ways to reduce violent crime. They ranked increasing the number of police officers, reducing drug abuse, and creating a better economy with more jobs higher than the death penalty as the best ways to reduce violence. The FBI has found the states with the death penalty have the highest murder rates.
Innocent people are too often sentenced to death. Sinceover people have been released from death rows in 26 states because of innocence. Nationally, at least one person is exonerated for every 10 that are executed. Inthe Supreme Court declared that under then-existing laws "the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty… constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. GeorgiaU. The Court, concentrating its objections on the manner in which death penalty laws had been applied, found the result so "harsh, freakish, and arbitrary" as to be constitutionally unacceptable. Making the nationwide impact of its decision unmistakable, the Court summarily reversed death sentences in the many cases then before it, which involved a wide range of state statutes, crimes and factual situations.
But within four years after the Furman decision, capital punishment essay topics, several hundred persons had been sentenced to death under new state capital punishment statutes written to provide guidance to juries in sentencing, capital punishment essay topics. These statutes require a two-stage trial procedure, in which the jury first determines guilt or innocence and then chooses imprisonment or death in the light of aggravating or mitigating circumstances. Inthe Supreme Court moved away from abolition, holding that "the punishment of capital punishment essay topics does not invariably violate the Constitution. Subsequently 38 state legislatures and the Federal government enacted death penalty statutes patterned after those the Court upheld in Gregg.
Congress also enacted and expanded federal death penalty statutes for peacetime espionage by military personnel and for a vast range of categories of murder. Executions resumed in Since then, states have developed a range of processes to capital punishment essay topics that mentally retarded individuals are not executed. Many have elected to hold proceedings prior to the merits trial, many with juries, capital punishment essay topics, to determine whether an accused is mentally retarded. Inthe Supreme Court held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution forbid imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed, resulting in commutation of death sentences to life for dozens of individuals across the country.
As of Augustover 3, men and women are under a death sentence and more than 1, men, women and children at the time of the crime have been executed since Despite the Supreme Court's ruling in Gregg v. Georgiacapital punishment essay topics al, the ACLU continues to oppose capital punishment on moral, practical, and constitutional grounds:. Capital punishment is cruel and unusual. It is cruel because it is a relic of the earliest days of penology, when slavery, branding, and other corporal punishments were commonplace. Like those barbaric practices, executions have no place in a civilized society.
It is unusual because only the United States of all the western industrialized nations engages in this punishment. It is also unusual because only a random sampling of convicted murderers in the United States receive a sentence of death. Capital punishment denies due process of law. Its imposition is often arbitrary, and always irrevocable — forever depriving an individual of the opportunity to benefit from new evidence or new laws that might warrant the reversal of a conviction, or the setting aside of a death sentence. The death penalty violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. It is applied randomly — and discriminatorily. It is imposed disproportionately upon those whose victims are white, offenders who are people of color, and on those who are poor and uneducated and concentrated in certain geographic regions of the country, capital punishment essay topics.
The death penalty is not a viable form of crime control. When police chiefs were asked to rank the factors that, in their judgment, reduce the rate of violent crime, they mentioned curbing drug use and putting more officers on the street, longer sentences and gun control. They ranked the death penalty as least effective. Politicians who preach the desirability of executions as a method of crime control deceive the public and mask their own failure to identify and confront the true causes of crime. Capital punishment wastes limited resources. It squanders the time and energy of courts, prosecuting attorneys, defense counsel, juries, and courtroom and law enforcement personnel.
It unduly burdens the criminal justice system, and it is thus counterproductive as an instrument for society's control of violent crime. Limited funds that could be used to prevent and solve crime and provide education and jobs are spent on capital punishment. Opposing the death penalty does not indicate a lack of sympathy for murder victims. On the contrary, murder demonstrates a lack of respect for human life. Because life is precious and death irrevocable, murder is abhorrent, and a policy of state-authorized killings is immoral. It epitomizes the tragic inefficacy and brutality of violence, rather than reason, as the solution to difficult social problems, capital punishment essay topics. Many murder victims do not support state-sponsored violence to avenge the death of their loved one.
Sadly, these victims have often been marginalized by politicians and prosecutors, who would rather publicize the opinions of pro-death penalty family members. Changes in death sentencing have proved to be largely cosmetic. The defects in death-penalty laws, conceded by the Supreme Court in the early s, have not been appreciably altered by the shift from unrestrained discretion to "guided discretion. A society that respects capital punishment essay topics does not deliberately kill human beings. An execution is a violent public spectacle of official homicide, and one that endorses killing to solve social problems — the worst possible example to set for the citizenry, and especially children. Governments worldwide have often attempted to justify their lethal fury by extolling the purported benefits that such killing would bring to the rest of society.
The benefits of capital punishment are illusory, but the bloodshed and the resulting destruction of community decency are real. Deterrence is a function not only of a punishment's severity, capital punishment essay topics also of its certainty and frequency. The argument most often cited in support of capital punishment is that the threat of execution influences criminal behavior more effectively than imprisonment does. As plausible as capital punishment essay topics claim may sound, in actuality the death penalty capital punishment essay topics as a deterrent for several reasons. A punishment can be an effective deterrent only if it is consistently and promptly employed. Capital punishment cannot be administered to meet these conditions.
The proportion of first-degree murderers who are sentenced to death is small, and of this group, an even smaller proportion of people are executed. Although death sentences in the mids increased to about per yearthis is still only about one percent of all homicides known to the police. Of all those convicted on a charge of criminal homicide, only 3 percent — about 1 in 33 — are eventually sentenced to death. Betweenthe average number of death sentences per year dropped toreducing the percentage even more. Mandatory death sentencing is unconstitutional. The possibility of increasing the number of convicted murderers sentenced to death and executed by enacting mandatory death penalty laws was ruled unconstitutional in Woodson v.
North CarolinaU. A considerable time between the imposition of the death sentence and the actual execution is unavoidable, given the procedural safeguards required by the courts in capital cases. Starting with selecting the trial jury, murder trials take far longer when the ultimate penalty is involved. Furthermore, post-conviction appeals in death-penalty cases are far more frequent than in other cases. These factors increase the time and cost of administering criminal justice. We can reduce delay and costs only by abandoning the procedural safeguards and constitutional rights of suspects, defendants, and convicts — with the attendant high risk of convicting the wrong person and executing the innocent, capital punishment essay topics. This is not a realistic prospect: our legal system will never reverse itself to deny defendants the right to counsel, or the right to an appeal.
Persons who commit murder and other crimes of personal violence often do not premeditate their crimes. Most capital crimes are committed in the heat of the moment. Most capital crimes are committed during moments of great emotional stress or under the influence of drugs or alcohol, when logical thinking has been suspended. Many capital crimes are committed by the badly emotionally-damaged or mentally ill. In such cases, violence is inflicted by persons unable to appreciate the consequences to themselves as well as to others. Even when crime is planned, the criminal ordinarily concentrates on escaping detection, arrest, and conviction. The threat of even the severest punishment will not discourage those who expect to escape detection and arrest.
It is impossible to imagine how the threat of any punishment could prevent a crime that is not premeditated. Furthermore, the death penalty is a futile threat for political terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh, because they usually act in the name of an ideology that honors its martyrs. Capital punishment doesn't solve our society's crime problem. Threatening capital punishment leaves the underlying causes of capital punishment essay topics unaddressed, and ignores the many political and diplomatic sanctions such as treaties against asylum for international terrorists that could appreciably lower the incidence of terrorism. Capital punishment has been a useless weapon in the so-called "war on drugs.
It is irrational to think that the death penalty — a remote threat at best — will avert murders committed in drug turf wars or by street-level dealers. If, however, severe punishment can deter crime, then permanent imprisonment is severe enough to deter any rational person from committing a violent crime. The vast preponderance of the evidence shows that the death penalty is no more effective than imprisonment in deterring murder and that it may even be an incitement to criminal violence. Death-penalty states as a group do not have lower rates of criminal homicide than non-death-penalty states. Use of the death penalty in a given state may actually increase the subsequent rate of criminal homicide.
Perhaps because "a return to the exercise of the capital punishment essay topics penalty weakens socially based inhibitions against the use of lethal force to settle disputes…. In adjacent states — one with the death penalty and the other without it — the state that practices the death penalty does not always show a consistently lower rate of criminal homicide. For example, capital punishment essay topics, between l and l, the homicide rates in Wisconsin and Iowa non-death-penalty capital punishment essay topics were half the rates of their neighbor, Illinois — which restored the death penalty in l, and by had sentenced persons to death and carried out two executions.
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Because life is precious and death irrevocable, murder is abhorrent, and a policy of state-authorized killings is immoral. It epitomizes the tragic inefficacy and brutality of violence, rather than reason, as the solution to difficult social problems. Many murder victims do not support state-sponsored violence to avenge the death of their loved one. Sadly, these victims have often been marginalized by politicians and prosecutors, who would rather publicize the opinions of pro-death penalty family members. Changes in death sentencing have proved to be largely cosmetic. The defects in death-penalty laws, conceded by the Supreme Court in the early s, have not been appreciably altered by the shift from unrestrained discretion to "guided discretion.
A society that respects life does not deliberately kill human beings. An execution is a violent public spectacle of official homicide, and one that endorses killing to solve social problems — the worst possible example to set for the citizenry, and especially children. Governments worldwide have often attempted to justify their lethal fury by extolling the purported benefits that such killing would bring to the rest of society. The benefits of capital punishment are illusory, but the bloodshed and the resulting destruction of community decency are real. Deterrence is a function not only of a punishment's severity, but also of its certainty and frequency. The argument most often cited in support of capital punishment is that the threat of execution influences criminal behavior more effectively than imprisonment does.
As plausible as this claim may sound, in actuality the death penalty fails as a deterrent for several reasons. A punishment can be an effective deterrent only if it is consistently and promptly employed. Capital punishment cannot be administered to meet these conditions. The proportion of first-degree murderers who are sentenced to death is small, and of this group, an even smaller proportion of people are executed. Although death sentences in the mids increased to about per year , this is still only about one percent of all homicides known to the police. Of all those convicted on a charge of criminal homicide, only 3 percent — about 1 in 33 — are eventually sentenced to death.
Between , the average number of death sentences per year dropped to , reducing the percentage even more. Mandatory death sentencing is unconstitutional. The possibility of increasing the number of convicted murderers sentenced to death and executed by enacting mandatory death penalty laws was ruled unconstitutional in Woodson v. North Carolina , U. A considerable time between the imposition of the death sentence and the actual execution is unavoidable, given the procedural safeguards required by the courts in capital cases. Starting with selecting the trial jury, murder trials take far longer when the ultimate penalty is involved. Furthermore, post-conviction appeals in death-penalty cases are far more frequent than in other cases.
These factors increase the time and cost of administering criminal justice. We can reduce delay and costs only by abandoning the procedural safeguards and constitutional rights of suspects, defendants, and convicts — with the attendant high risk of convicting the wrong person and executing the innocent. This is not a realistic prospect: our legal system will never reverse itself to deny defendants the right to counsel, or the right to an appeal. Persons who commit murder and other crimes of personal violence often do not premeditate their crimes. Most capital crimes are committed in the heat of the moment.
Most capital crimes are committed during moments of great emotional stress or under the influence of drugs or alcohol, when logical thinking has been suspended. Many capital crimes are committed by the badly emotionally-damaged or mentally ill. In such cases, violence is inflicted by persons unable to appreciate the consequences to themselves as well as to others. Even when crime is planned, the criminal ordinarily concentrates on escaping detection, arrest, and conviction. The threat of even the severest punishment will not discourage those who expect to escape detection and arrest. It is impossible to imagine how the threat of any punishment could prevent a crime that is not premeditated.
Furthermore, the death penalty is a futile threat for political terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh, because they usually act in the name of an ideology that honors its martyrs. Capital punishment doesn't solve our society's crime problem. Threatening capital punishment leaves the underlying causes of crime unaddressed, and ignores the many political and diplomatic sanctions such as treaties against asylum for international terrorists that could appreciably lower the incidence of terrorism. Capital punishment has been a useless weapon in the so-called "war on drugs. It is irrational to think that the death penalty — a remote threat at best — will avert murders committed in drug turf wars or by street-level dealers.
If, however, severe punishment can deter crime, then permanent imprisonment is severe enough to deter any rational person from committing a violent crime. The vast preponderance of the evidence shows that the death penalty is no more effective than imprisonment in deterring murder and that it may even be an incitement to criminal violence. Death-penalty states as a group do not have lower rates of criminal homicide than non-death-penalty states. Use of the death penalty in a given state may actually increase the subsequent rate of criminal homicide. Perhaps because "a return to the exercise of the death penalty weakens socially based inhibitions against the use of lethal force to settle disputes….
In adjacent states — one with the death penalty and the other without it — the state that practices the death penalty does not always show a consistently lower rate of criminal homicide. For example, between l and l, the homicide rates in Wisconsin and Iowa non-death-penalty states were half the rates of their neighbor, Illinois — which restored the death penalty in l, and by had sentenced persons to death and carried out two executions. On-duty police officers do not suffer a higher rate of criminal assault and homicide in abolitionist states than they do in death-penalty states.
Between and , for example, lethal assaults against police were not significantly more or less frequent in abolitionist states than in death-penalty states. Capital punishment did not appear to provide officers added protection during that time frame. In fact, the three leading states in law enforcement homicide in were also very active death penalty states : California highest death row population , Texas most executions since , and Florida third highest in executions and death row population. If anything, the death penalty incited violence rather than curbed it. Prisoners and prison personnel do not suffer a higher rate of criminal assault and homicide from life-term prisoners in abolition states than they do in death-penalty states.
Between and , inmates were murdered by other prisoners. Evidently, the threat of the death penalty "does not even exert an incremental deterrent effect over the threat of a lesser punishment in the abolitionist states. Actual experience thus establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty does not deter murder. No comparable body of evidence contradicts that conclusion. Furthermore, there are documented cases in which the death penalty actually incited the capital crimes it was supposed to deter. These include instances of the so-called suicide-by-execution syndrome — persons who wanted to die but feared taking their own lives, and committed murder so that the state would kill them.
For example, in , Daniel Colwell , who suffered from mental illness, claimed that he killed a randomly-selected couple in a Georgia parking lot so that the state would kill him — he was sentenced to death and ultimately took his own life while on death row. Although inflicting the death penalty guarantees that the condemned person will commit no further crimes, it does not have a demonstrable deterrent effect on other individuals. Further, it is a high price to pay when studies show that few convicted murderers commit further crimes of violence. Researchers examined the prison and post-release records of prisoners on death row in whose sentences were reduced to incarceration for life by the Supreme Court's ruling in Furman. This research showed that seven had committed another murder.
But the same study showed that in four other cases, an innocent man had been sentenced to death. Marquart and Sorensen, in Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review Recidivism among murderers does occasionally happen, but it occurs less frequently than most people believe; the media rarely distinguish between a convicted offender who murders while on parole, and a paroled murderer who murders again. Government data show that about one in 12 death row prisoners had a prior homicide conviction. But as there is no way to predict reliably which convicted murderers will try to kill again, the only way to prevent all such recidivism is to execute every convicted murderer — a policy no one seriously advocates. Equally effective but far less inhumane is a policy of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Constitutional due process and elementary justice both require that the judicial functions of trial and sentencing be conducted with fundamental fairness, especially where the irreversible sanction of the death penalty is involved. In murder cases since , 88 percent of all executions have been for this crime , there has been substantial evidence to show that courts have sentenced some persons to prison while putting others to death in a manner that has been arbitrary, racially biased, and unfair. Racial discrimination was one of the grounds on which the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in Furman.
Half a century ago, in his classic American Dilemma , Gunnar Myrdal reported that "the South makes the widest application of the death penalty, and Negro criminals come in for much more than their share of the executions. Our nation's death rows have always held a disproportionately large population of African Americans, relative to their percentage of the total population. Comparing black and white offenders over the past century, the former were often executed for what were considered less-than-capital offenses for whites, such as rape and burglary. Between and , men were executed for rape, of whom — 90 percent — were black. A higher percentage of the blacks who were executed were juveniles; and the rate of execution without having one's conviction reviewed by any higher court was higher for blacks.
Bowers, Legal Homicide ; Streib, Death Penalty for Juveniles In recent years, it has been argued that such flagrant racial discrimination is a thing of the past. However, since the revival of the death penalty in the mids, about half of those on death row at any given time have been black. More striking is the racial comparison of victims. African-Americans are six times as likely as white Americans to die at the hands of a murderer, and roughly seven times as likely to murder someone. Young black men are fifteen times as likely to be murdered as young white men. So given this information, when those under death sentence are examined more closely, it turns out that race is a decisive factor after all.
The classic statistical study of racial discrimination in capital cases in Georgia presented in the McCleskey case showed that "the average odds of receiving a death sentence among all indicted cases were 4. Baldus et al. Kemp and while the Court did not dispute the statistical evidence, it held that evidence of an overall pattern of racial bias was not sufficient. McCleskey would have to prove racial bias in his own case — a virtually impossible task. The Court also held that the evidence failed to show that there was "a constitutionally significant risk of racial bias In , the U. General Accounting Office reported to the Congress the results of its review of empirical studies on racism and the death penalty.
The GAO concluded : "Our synthesis of the 28 studies shows a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty after the Furman decision" and that "race of victim influence was found at all stages of the criminal justice system process Texas was prepared to execute Duane Buck on September 15, Buck was condemned to death by a jury that had been told by an expert psychologist that he was more likely to be dangerous because he was African American. The Supreme Court stayed the case, but Mr. Buck has not yet received the new sentencing hearing justice requires. These results cannot be explained away by relevant non-racial factors, such as prior criminal record or type of crime, as these were factored for in the Baldus and GAO studies referred to above.
They lead to a very unsavory conclusion: In the trial courts of this nation, even at the present time, the killing of a white person is treated much more severely than the killing of a black person. Of the white defendants executed, only three had been convicted of murdering people of color. Our criminal justice system essentially reserves the death penalty for murderers regardless of their race who kill white victims. Both gender and socio-economic class also determine who receives a death sentence and who is executed. Women account for only two percent of all people sentenced to death , even though females commit about 11 percent of all criminal homicides.
Many of the women under death sentence were guilty of killing men who had victimized them with years of violent abuse. Since , only 51 women have been executed in the United States 15 of them black. Discrimination against the poor and in our society, racial minorities are disproportionately poor is also well established. It is a prominent factor in the availability of counsel. Fairness in capital cases requires, above all, competent counsel for the defendant. Yet "approximately 90 percent of those on death row could not afford to hire a lawyer when they were tried. As Justice William O. Douglas noted in Furman , "One searches our chronicles in vain for the execution of any member of the affluent strata in this society" US The demonstrated inequities in the actual administration of capital punishment should tip the balance against it in the judgment of fair-minded and impartial observers.
Justice John Marshall Harlan, writing for the Court in Furman , noted "… the history of capital punishment for homicides … reveals continual efforts, uniformly unsuccessful, to identify before the fact those homicides for which the slayer should die…. Those who have come to grips with the hard task of actually attempting to draft means of channeling capital sentencing discretion have confirmed the lesson taught by history…. To identify before the fact those characteristics of criminal homicides and their perpetrators which call for the death penalty, and to express these characteristics in language which can be fairly understood and applied by the sentencing authority, appear to be tasks which are beyond present human ability.
Yet in the Gregg decision, the majority of the Supreme Court abandoned the wisdom of Justice Harlan and ruled as though the new guided-discretion statutes could accomplish the impossible. The truth is that death statutes approved by the Court "do not effectively restrict the discretion of juries by any real standards, and they never will. No society is going to kill everybody who meets certain preset verbal requirements, put on the statute books without awareness of coverage of the infinity of special factors the real world can produce. Evidence obtained by the Capital Jury Project has shown that jurors in capital trials generally do not understand the judge's instructions about the laws that govern the choice between imposing the death penalty and a life sentence.
Even when they do comprehend, jurors often refuse to be guided by the law. The effect [of this relative lack of comprehension of the law]… is to reduce the likelihood that capital defendants will benefit from the safeguards against arbitrariness built into the… law. Even if the jury's sentencing decision were strictly governed by the relevant legal criteria, there remains a vast reservoir of unfettered discretion: the prosecutor's decision to prosecute for a capital or lesser crime, the court's willingness to accept or reject a guilty plea, the jury's decision to convict for second-degree murder or manslaughter rather than capital murder, the determination of the defendant's sanity, and the governor's final clemency decision, among others.
Discretion in the criminal justice system is unavoidable. The history of capital punishment in America clearly demonstrates the social desire to mitigate the harshness of the death penalty by narrowing the scope of its application. Whether or not explicitly authorized by statutes, sentencing discretion has been the main vehicle to this end. But when sentencing discretion is used — as it too often has been — to doom the poor, the friendless, the uneducated, racial minorities, and the despised, it becomes injustice. Mindful of such facts, the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association including 20 out of 24 former presidents of the ABA called for a moratorium on all executions by a vote of to in February The House judged the current system to be "a haphazard maze of unfair practices.
In its survey of the death penalty in the United States, the International Commission of Jurists reinforced this point. Despite the efforts made over the past two decades since Gregg to protect the administration of the death penalty from abuses, the actual "constitutional errors committed in state courts have gravely undermined the legitimacy of the death penalty as a punishment for crime. In , the American Law Institute ALI , the leading independent organization in the U. producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize and improve the law, removed capital punishment from its Model Penal Code. The ALI, which created the modern legal framework for the death penalty in , indicated that the punishment is so arbitrary, fraught with racial and economic disparities, and unable to assure quality legal representation for indigent capital defendants, that it can never be administered fairly.
Thoughtful citizens, who might possibly support the abstract notion of capital punishment, are obliged to condemn it in actual practice. Unlike any other criminal punishments, the death penalty is irrevocable. Speaking to the French Chamber of Deputies in , years after having witnessed the excesses of the French Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette said, "I shall ask for the abolition of the punishment of death until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me. Since , in this country, there have been on the average more than four cases each year in which an entirely innocent person was convicted of murder.
Scores of these individuals were sentenced to death. In many cases, a reprieve or commutation arrived just hours, or even minutes, before the scheduled execution. Therefore, it becomes clear that the leaders in executions may not be the per capita leaders in executions, and that one must examine executions in comparison to state populations. The number of executions in each state also varies dramatically, and some of that variance becomes…. Works Cited Death Penalty Information Center. Death Penalty Information Center.
However, on the contradicting side, the question is "Can death penalty really deter criminals?. An online source indicates the following evidences. From to , the number of executions per year in the United States has increased from 0 to just under The homicide rate per , population has remained constant at just under Criminologists who belong to the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Law and Society Association were polled. Despite of different opinions and stands on death penalty, several researches find that there are more reasons why death penalty should be abolished.
First of all, death penalty does not value…. Bibliography Wagner, Peter. Crime and Punishment in the U. html Johnson, David. Deadly Questions. html Capital Punishment: The Death Penalty. htm Facts About Capital Punishment. The death penalty may exact a high cost but so does remaining behind bars for life imprisonment Haag ut righting wrongs in a society has a higher option than entailing the costs. Penalties are also acts of social retribution to restrain personal or private vengeance aimed at vindicating the law and social order, which has been injured or violated by a crime. Proponents or advocates of the death penalty emphasize on this viewpoint.
They also see that executing a murderer, though unpleasant, is lawful as against the unlawful and undeserved killing, wherein the criminal's life must be taken away. They also view the death penalty as not unjust as it is necessary in deterring crimes and in instituting justice. It may, at times, be inappropriate but the punishment of the guilt is not viewed as unjust. y committing a crime, the person takes the risk of acquiring that punishment…. Bibliography 1. Haag, Ernest van den. The Ultimate Punishment: a Defense. Harvard Law Review Association, 2. Hood, Roger. The Death Penalty: a Worldwide Perspective, revised edition. Clarendon Press, 3. New Abolitionist. Campaign to End the Death Penalty, CEDP Fact Sheet, org 4.
Capital Punishment. Media Wiki. Capital Punishment Currently, 38 states have legalized capital punishment statutes. In most states, the reinstatements of the death penalty were a response to public outcry over the perceived increase of violent crimes. There are now more than 3, people on death row, and more are being convicted each year. Despite this legalized status, a vocal group of opponents have raised questions regarding the constitutionality, fairness and effectiveness of capital punishment. This paper argues that opponents of the death penalty are misguided, and that the death penalty is a sad but necessary tool for American society. The first part of the paper is an overview regarding capital punishment in the United States. It looks at which states have legalized the death penalty and how this punishment is imposed.
It focuses especially on Texas, the leading state in the number of executions. The next part of the paper gives an overview of…. Works Cited Bonner, Raymond and Fessenden, Ford. Cohen, Laurie P. Goldberg, Steven. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, The lack of consistency in these results presents a complex problem before us in evaluating the utilitarian value of death penalty. One more aspect to be considered under the utilitarian thought is the cost of executions. It is well-known that the legal cost of executions in the United States is the greatest in the world and exceeds the cost for a lifetime imprisonment. However the 'cost of execution' ratio is not the same in other parts of the world and hence cannot be universally applied in evaluating capital punishments.
Also the right to high quality legal representation is a major factor in deciding the outcome of the case. Poor people have no recourse to hiring expensive lawyers and are left in the lurch. This disparity that…. html 2 University of Alaska, "The death Penalty in the U. The study also made an assessment of the 14 countries who eradicated the capital punishment. Besides, researches were conducted by Prof. Issac Erlich from the years to He came to the conclusion that "An added execution per year might bring down the number of murders. We are all aware that all the appeals, the capital punishment is not rapid!
In reality, nearly every killer believes that they have every possibility that the death sentence will be waived. In case the capital punishment was rapid and unavoidable, a lowering of the homicide rates was a distinct possibility. ecurring murders were eradicated and murders that…. Accessed on 16 April, Capital Punishment: Life or Death? Accessed on 16 April, Capital Punishment: Three good reasons for supporting the death penalty. Accessed on 16 April, Death Penalty Arguments: This Paper in Memoriam of Sean Burgado. Accessed on 16 April, Capital Punishment The issue of the death penalty and capital crime has become one of the dominant issues debated in contemporary culture.
The reason for this is firstly a moral questioning of the right to take a life, even when it is in retribution for extreme crimes like murder. The foundation of this contemporary attitude lie in the view that modern culture and society should be able to deal with extreme crime in a more humane and therapeutic way than is at present the case. The issue of capital punishment also leads to hosts of pertinent issues and questions that often extend further than confines of the topic and have a direct and indirect connection to social, cultural and sociological issues. One of the most relevant issues debated today is the fallibility of the legal system.
Many critics refer to statistics that prove numerous people have been executed as a…. Bibliography Derechos. Human rights. Acessed 17 April, And Stuart E. Rosenbaum, eds. The Current Debate. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, Bedau, Hugo Adam, ed. The Death Penalty in America An Anthology. Chicago: Aldine Pub. Bienen, Leigh B. Death Penalty: Social Attitudes and Modern Alternatives The issue of the death penalty raises deep emotions on all sides of the debate. Many feel that the death penalty no longer holds value as a tool for society to prevent heinous crimes. In the past, the prevalence of the death penalty created a measure of deterrence on social behaviors.
However, in modern life, there is no longer is a measurable deterrence felt in the public consciousness. Like a magnet which is too far from a piece of iron to draw the metal toward it, the distance between the commission of the crime and a death penalty execution has diminished deterrence in all but theoretical discussions. Many feel that the death penalty contains a measure of justice, and that the criminals 'deserve' to die, as well as society 'deserves' to see justice through death of the convicted. Those who present this argument…. Bibliography Bedea, Hugo. The Death Penalty in America: An Anthology Chicago: Aldine Pub.
IV, no. October 12, , pp. The Case Against Capital Punishment," Social Action. The Council for Christian Social Action, United Church of Christ. April, Friends' Conference on Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, What Do the Churches Say on Capital Punishment? Opponents also provide evidence that the death penalty is unjust. Data show that death row prisoners are disproportionately low income, minority, and under-represented by the legal system. Thus, we many wonder if those who can't afford the best lawyers are more likely to be sentenced to death, and if so, then we may have effectively put a price on the life of a criminal. Similarly, if the flawed legal system convicts an innocent person and sentences him to death, there is no opportunity for justice to prevail when the prisoner's innocence is ultimately proven.
Two states, Maine and hode Island, discovered that they had likely executed innocent men and subsequently abolished the death penalty. Many note that the time and expenses associated with the death penalty are reasons enough to disallow it. Extensive review and judicial process is guaranteed for death row cases, with the intent of ensuring that innocent…. References Arguments For and Against Capital Punishment. html Bailey, William C. Crime and Deterrence: A Correlation Analysis. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 11 2 : Death Penalty Arguments: Pros and Cons. Available at:. Capital Punishment Like abortion, the institution of capital punishment is a very divisive topic.
The line dividing the supporters and opponents of capital punishment is variably drawn across political philosophies, race, sex and religion. The Governor of Illinois, not long ago, declared a moratorium on death penalty cases in his state. This essay is dedicated to a presentation of facts about capital punishment, without delving into personal opinions in support or opposition. Approximately, 80 per cent of Americans support the death penalty. When options are offered, such as life imprisonment without possibility of parole, the number of people who support the death penalty reduces to about 53 per cent. Recently, the number of people put to death has decreased. Improvements in forensic technologies, especially, DNA testing is the cause. Many unfairly condemned people have been exonerated.
Strong cases have been made for and against capital punishment. Supporters of the death…. Bibliography Bedau, H. Killing as Punishment: Reflection on the Death Penalty in America. Boston: Northeastern University Press, Cauthen, K. Toward a New Modernism. Lanham, Md. Dorsen, N. The Unpredictable Constitution. New York: New York University Press, Easterbrook, G. DNA and the End of Innocence. The Myth of Fingerprints. Politically correct or not, criminals should pay for the crimes they commit. In no society do we see no punishment for crimes. alter Berns notes that Aristotle taught anger is just and those who kill should be held responsible. e do not live in such a politically correct society that executing justice is perceived as wrong. Justice is never wrong and we as a society should never feel guilt or wrong when we feel angry because someone has been murdered.
Anger is a "human passion" Berns qtd. In hite , states Berns and murderers are "properly the objects of anger," In some cases, anger is healthy and no one can argue that anger over murder is not justified. Berns understands that angry men are also capable of respecting life. Supporting the death penalty does not make one less human it defends life. Defending life and the sanctity of life…. Works Cited Amsterdam, Anthony. White, James Ed. New York: West Publishing Company. Bayat, Mufti Zubair. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale Resource Center. Speaking of the "geography of the federal death penalty," Cohen asserts that six of the ninety-four federal judicial districts account for fully "one-third of death authorizations.
Juxtapose those data with the fact that two-thirds of districts have never sentenced anyone to death, and you see the difficulty in justifying the geographic breakdown of death penalty cases. Conclusion Clearly there are problems -- very serious problems -- within the system of justice when it comes to the death penalty. Works Cited American Bar Association. Death Without Justice: A Guide for Examining the Administration of the Death Penalty in the United States. Cohen, Ben G. The Racial Geography of the Federal Death Penalty. Washington Law Review, 85 3 , Saad, Lydia. Americans Hold Firm to Support for Death Penalty. Capital Punishment In more than half the countries of the world, there is no death penalty as was the case in Australia for a long time.
As many as 76 countries do not have death penalty for any crime. In Australia, Queensland was the first among the states to abolish death penalty in and the last death penalty was carried out in Capital Punishment In many countries, punishment is very harsh and the nature of punishment is comparable to capital punishment. One such country is Saudi Arabia. There the Shari at convention or the religious laws of Muslims are applicable. When a Muslim changes his religion to some other religion the punishment is death, if he does not convert back. For others there are many other equally harsh punishments, and in October , Amnesty International reported that two teachers of the Ismailia Shia faith, who were arrested in…. References Encyclopedia: Status of religious freedom in Saudi Arabia. Issues in Society.
Volume html Kingston, Margo. Howard to the states: Capital punishment your call. html Stolinsky, David. America: The Most Violent Nation? Introduction to the Death Penalty This view was also based on the important morals issue of the right to life. In terms of this ethical stance which emphasized the sacred nature of life there can be little moral justification for the implementation of the capital punishment. There is also another moral dimension that should be considered in this regard. This refers to the view that in a civilized society there should be humane and make use of more sophisticated ways of….
Bibliography Bienen, Leigh B. September 26, Introduction to the Death Penalty. Our society does not truly condone or express interest in the Old Testament eye for an eye type of justice - we do not support the removal of limbs or torture, we do not force the criminal to forfeit their property other than money as direct restitution criminal law does not generally include a commitment to the victim other than jail time - money is doled out in civil court , nor do we support the killing of the perpetrator's family in the case of murder. ather, our support for capital punishment comes from something less direct and more limited in scope - the idea that there is a point at which a criminal act goes too far, crosses a line that there is no returning from.
Some crimes, to a particular society, are so heinous, so unforgivable, that allowing the perpetrator to live, even in jail, is an affront to…. References Cohen, Michael. Coope, Christopher Miles. The Hangman's Knot. Feb ; , p5. Though this does not factor in geriatric care Capital cases apparently cost between one million and seven million to prosecute, confine, and execute. The next year the state laid off police officers because they could not afford to pay them Any suggestion that the appeals process be shortened is, of course, met with outrage regarding the possible conviction of innocent people.
These all seem like powerful arguments, however, there are some significant flaws that are easily pointed out. For example, the idea that the death penalty devalues human life is seen by many as absurd. Chuck Colson, who has worked for decades with prison outreach and who has many personal friends on Death Row,…. To help such victims, the Florida Department of Health had set up several billboards in Tampa and the billboards say, "Sex without consent is rape. This increase in the number of crimes as well as the lasting effect it has on the victim qualifies it as a potential case for death penalty. This is not excessive when compared to the nature of the crime and the use of the eight amendment of the constitution to this crime should be removed.
It was written in the constitution to protect people who are likely to be charged with death penalty for minor offenses and rape or sexual assault is by no means a minor offense. This is the reason it should be removed for this gruesome…. References Hylton, Hilary. Death Penalty for Child Molesters? html No author. Nov Sex without consent is rape. Tampa Bay Wellness. Vol 24 Winter Barberry and the treatment of sexual trauma. American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine. Vol 4. Rayburn, Corey. Fall Better Dead than Raped: The Patriarchal Rhetoric driving capital rape statutes.
John's Law Review. Vol 78 4. pp If the court puts a man in prison and later discovers his innocence, he can easily be released. It is tragic, but he is able to get at least some of his life back, largely dependent on how long he was incarcerated. If a man has been executed, however, and then it is discovered that he was innocent, there is no compensation that can be given. His life is already over, and the people that he has left behind are involved in as much pain and grief as the family of the victim. Meanwhile, the real criminal is still out in the world, getting the chance to do harm to others as well.
This is not something that happens often, but it has happened in the past. If the death penalty remains in effect, it will quite likely happen again. Another issue to be considered is that many people who…. The opponents of the death claim that death penalty is used disproportionately against minorities and the death row in the U. holds a disproportionately large population of blacks relative to their general population. This is disproved by the Bureau of Justice Statistics report, which states: "since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in , white inmates have made up the majority of those under sentence of death. between and vs. Conclusion In conclusion, it would be fair to say that the arguments put forwarded by the opponents of death penalty are neither based on solid reasons nor on verifiable facts.
On the other hand, as we saw in this essay, capital punishment is an effective deterrent against serious crime, is morally justified,…. References Deterrence: States Without the Death Penalty Fared Better Over Past Decade. June 3, htm Jacoby, J. August htm Lowe, W. Pro-Death Penalty Webpage. Twenty other studies in the nation have found similar results in their studies. It has also been found that the race of the defendant plays a major role in whether or not he or she is sentenced to death. Blacks tend to be overrepresented in shootings that include robberies, while white offenders are more likely to commit crimes that involve rape and violence to the victim during the murder. Despite the fact that the evidence shows that crimes committed by whites are often more brutal or more apt to involve vulnerable individuals, blacks are 1.
Many proponents of the death penalty, including the Supreme Court, believe that racial disparities are not unconstitutional. Opponents, however, believe that minorities are overrepresented in the capital justice system. By reading this article, it becomes clear that race is a factor during sentencing. This disparity…. Works Cited Phillip, David. New York Times, 18 Dec. Liptak, Adam. New York Times, 19 Apr. Murder cannot be a decried and yet practiced by the same entity without being hypocritical. Innumerable individuals on death row have been wrongfully convicted due to any number of reasons.
The appeals of death row inmates sometimes never get heard. Those inmates who cannot afford to fight a good appeal are the worse off of all. Because DNA testing and more traditional forms of evidence can be used to reverse the death penalty, caution should be used when sentencing a citizen to death. Death is irreversible; life in prison is not. The families of the wrongfully convicted deserve such consideration. Moreover, the death penalty is meted out unjustly to a greater number of poor, minority, and disabled population. Capital punishment reveals biases and flaws in the American judicial system. The death penalty is also extremely costly even though it would seem that killing a convict costs less than feeding one.
Works Cited ACLU. html Amnesty International. htm Death Penalty Focus. Death Penalty Evolution of the Death Penalty in Supreme Court Jurisprudence Capital punishment has been in existence for centuries. As early back as the Eighteenth Century B. The utilization of the death penalty for designated crimes continued through the years and became incorporated in Britain's penal system DPIC, Britain's use of capital punishment carried over into colonial America DPIC, Since that time, the death penalty has been a part of the American criminal justice system. However, its use has not been without strong opposition. This paper explores the Supreme Court cases exploring this controversial topic and discusses the evolution of jurisprudence on the subject matter. Much of the legal support or opposition for the use of the death penalty has been at the state level.
Where the death…. References Atkins v. We use cookies to give you the best experience possible. If you continue, we will assume that you agree to our Cookies Policy. Table of Contents. Learn More. The opponents of capital of capital punishment argue that it is not a just and humane way of punishing heinous criminals in the society because everybody has right to life. In line with the above argument, supporters of capital punishment argue that the practice permanently removes thieves, murderers, rapists, and other criminals from the face of society, in the process making it safer for compliant […].
This is because quiet a number of the abolitions have been associated with democratic developments in political systems of the countries that have abolished the penalties. Conservatives have in the United States been strongly opposed […]. However, it is wrong and unjustified because it is inhuman, unfair, violates the human right to life, and it does not aid in reduction of crime. The main reasons that opponents of the death penalty give for their position are, the fact that the death penalty is inhumane and cruel. Those for the death penalty in the movie are represented by Ramunda who becomes a strong advocate for the death penalty and in many instances, is a counterpart of Cushing.
Politicians are frequently trying to expand the scope of capital punishment by bringing in a host of crimes under it. Capital punishment is also unnecessary since there are better ways of punishing criminals such as life imprisonment to keep the society in order and at peace. For the case of murder or crimes that necessitate capital punishment, the incentive to commit murder is directly related to the uncertainties that punishments for the crime will generate. Mills rightly points out that the very grounds of humanity used to support the removal of the death penalty should also be the ones used to support retaining of the sentence. The cost of maintenance of the convicted individuals is also one of the reasons that necessitate the death penalty. The reaffirmation of the death penalty is also attributed to the teachings portrayed by most religions.
This paper examines death penalty from an impartial view by considering disadvantages and advantages of capital punishment in society. Thirdly, Teeters views that death penalty is a retribution action in which a victim is punished […]. According to research done by Freedman and Hemenway on a group of death row inmates, it was established that almost a two-thirds of the death row inmates are retarded. Another significant benefit offered by the death penalty to the society is that it leads to the permanent incapacitation of the convicted person.
The punishment is believed to have been there even at the time of the earlier colonies of the United States; it as well continued to be in force within the states that came to form […].
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