Pros and Cons of Death Penalty,Cite this page
WebFeb 7, · There are many reasons as to why I think the death penalty should be legalized in all states, including deterrence, retribution, and morality; and because opposing arguments do not hold up, I will refute the ideas that the death penalty is WebThe Cons of the Death Penalty Essay. Death Penalty: The Eighth Amendment To The United States. First in foremost, the use of capital punishment harms the innocent. WebDeath Penalty Essays. About the Death Penalty. Words: Pages: 4 The death penalty has been a method used as far back as the Eighteenth century B.C. The use of WebApr 21, · In this essay, it will show the existence of the death penalty can be justified. Some of the biggest issues with the death penalty are: social safety, family members of WebMar 14, · While supporters of death penalty argue that capital punishments would deter dreaded criminals from indulging in serious crimes there are many who hold that ... read more
I believe the death penalty should be legal throughout the nation. There are many reasons as to why I think the death penalty should be legalized in all states, including deterrence, retribution, and morality; and because opposing arguments do not hold up, I will refute the ideas that the death penalty is unconstitutional, irrevocable mistakes are made, and that there is a disproportionality of race and income level. The use of capital punishment greatly deters citizens from committing crimes such as murder. They fear most death deliberately inflicted by law and scheduled by the courts…. Hence, the threat of the death penalty may deter some murderers who otherwise might not have been deterred. And surely the death penalty is the only penalty that could deter prisoners already serving a life sentence and tempted to kill a guard, or offenders about to be arrested and facing a life sentence.
This was due to other possible murderers being deterred from committing murder after realizing that other criminals are executed for their crimes. Capital punishment also acts as a deterrent for recidivism the rate at which previously convicted criminals return to committing crimes after being released ; if the criminal is executed he has no opportunity to commit crimes again. Some may argue that there is not enough concrete evidence to use deterrence as an argument for the death penalty. The reason some evidence may be inconclusive is that the death penalty often takes a while to be carried out; some prisoners sit on death row for years before being executed. This can influence the effectiveness of deterrence because punishments that are carried out swiftly are better examples to others.
Although the death penalty is already effective at deterring possible criminals, it would be even more effective if the legal process were carried out more quickly instead of having inmates on death row for years. The death penalty also carries out retribution justly. When someone commits a crime it disturbs the order of society; these crimes take away lives, peace, and liberties from society. Giving the death penalty as a punishment simply restores order to society and adequately punishes the criminal for his wrongdoing. Retribution also serves justice for murder victims and their families. The death penalty puts the scales of justice back in balance after they were unfairly tipped towards the criminal.
The morality of the death penalty has been hotly debated for many years. Those opposed to the death penalty say that it is immoral for the government to take the life of a citizen under any circumstance. It is immoral to not properly punish a person who has committed such a horrendous crime. The criminal is also executed humanely; in no way is he subjected to torture or any form of cruelty. All states that use the death penalty use lethal injection; the days of subjecting a prisoner to hanging or the electric chair are long gone in the US.
Inmates are first given a large dose of an anesthetic so they do not feel any pain; this proves that the process is made as humane as possible so the inmates do not physically suffer. Although the issue of morality is very personal for many people, it is important to see the facts and realize that capital punishment does take morality into account and therefore is carried out in the best way possible. The eighth amendment to the United States Constitution prevents cruel and unusual punishment. Many opponents of capital punishment say that execution is cruel and unusual punishment and therefore violates the Constitution. As was stated earlier, the recipient of the death penalty is treated humanely and is not tortured in any way, shape, or form.
After the anesthetic is administered the person feels no pain; the only part of the process that could be considered painful is when the IV is inserted, but that is done in hospitals on a daily basis and no one is calling it unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the death penalty as constitutional in cases they have presided over. In the case of Furman v. The Supreme Court has not found capital punishment to be unconstitutional, and therefore this argument for abolition is invalid. Capital punishment can be a difficult topic to approach because people tend to have extreme views on it.
The death penalty is an asset to society; it deters potential criminals as well as serves retribution to criminals, and is in no way immoral. The arguments against the death penalty often do not hold up when examined more closely. It is important that the nation is united on this issue, rather than having some states use capital punishment while others do not. The death penalty can be an extremely useful tool in sentencing criminals that have committed some of the worst crimes known to society. It is imperative that we begin to pass legislation making capital punishment legal throughout the United States so that justice can be served properly.
Pros and Cons of Death Penalty Twenty-nine states in the United States have legalized the death penalty. That means that twenty-one of our states are smart enough to keep it banned for the sense of our society now-a-days. Statistically, there has been over fifteen thousand killings with the death penalty since it has been originated. No one wants to be sent to death row; it is by far the most cruel and inhuman punishment anyone could ever receive. In this world, there are eight different types of execution still being used. The United States being able to use three of these methods: Lethal injection, Electrocution, and Gas inhalation.
Other Countries around the world still use the processes of Hanging, Shooting, Beheading, Stoning, and Crucifixion. Most of these areas have some kind of legal government utilizing which methods to use, if multiple is available. Hanging was abandoned in the United States when a hanging went in the wrong direction and instead of the spinal cord being severed, it was either a decapitation or slowly strangling to death. Most of which had their own problems as well, but still being more reliable. Approximately 2 percent of them were botched, some of them when the condemned caught on fire and filled the death chamber with smoke and the smell of burning flesh. The gas chamber, first used in , proved to be even less reliable. More than 5 percent of executions in the gas chamber were botched when the gas did not produce rapid loss of consciousness and witnesses watched as the condemned suffered an agonizingly slow asphyxiation.
We also considered that the average age for men and women are both around seventy-four to seventy-eight years of life. We have a lot more people who think about what they do and decide they want to live over dying any day. As a reaction to capital punishment, there are families out there who suffer from losses of children, loved ones, and family members. Not letting those who are on death row have an equal trial is in violation of amendment 14 and 6 of the Constitution. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Amendment 6 states, in brief words, that everyone is guaranteed a fair trial before sentencing or coming up with a solution. It is wrong and unfair, not to mention the most unusual and cruel punishment that the world has ever had. In the opinion of most people, capital punishment should be legal because someone people just deserve to die from doing morbidly horrific things. Me as a human with choices, I decided to be on that lower sided percentage and refuse to let people just murder anyone they want on death row, whether innocent or not. This phrase should mean in all criminal cases that someone objected to law deserves and receives a trial to be proven guilty or innocent.
In a final look at this argument between right and wrong, it seems to be capital punishment is also a way to keep population at good standards. So many people being on death row every year are killed and left behind which cuts the population down and makes it easier for the new and upcoming generations to change things. While most adults on death row are between 20 to 50, give or take few in different locations. Capital punishment cannot be administered to meet these conditions. Another side would be that lethal injection is used most because it has been said to be the easiest and less painful way to kill a criminal. That being known it is used the most on people but there has recently been killings that are interrupted because the dosage was gave to them wrong or it was the wrong medicine, making it a not-so-easy way of killing these people and making it an aggressive or slow way to die.
In conclusion, Capital Punishment is wrong. Everyone deserves to have a fair trial whether innocent or guilty. If only one person tries to help an innocent criminal on death row, it could take up to fifteen years just for them to get everyone else to switch sides. No one deserves to be thrown into death row without a fair trial and someone actually helping them. No one deserves to be killed. Everyone has a path and it never ends on death row. 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. 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. 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.
These erroneous convictions have occurred in virtually every jurisdiction from one end of the nation to the other. Nor have they declined in recent years, despite the new death penalty statutes approved by the Supreme Court. Disturbingly, and increasingly, a large body of evidence from the modern era shows that innocent people are often convicted of crimes — including capital crimes — and that some have been executed. He was convicted largely based on eyewitness testimony made from the back of a police car in a dimly lit lot near the crime scene. This sample of freakish and arbitrary innocence determinations also speaks directly to the unceasing concern that there are many more innocent people on death rows across the country — as well as who have been executed.
Several factors seen in the above sample of cases help explain why the judicial system cannot guarantee that justice will never miscarry: overzealous prosecution, mistaken or perjured testimony, race, faulty police work, coerced confessions, the defendant's previous criminal record, inept and under-resourced defense counsel, seemingly conclusive circumstantial evidence, and community pressure for a conviction, among others. And when the system does go wrong, it is often volunteers from outside the criminal justice system — journalists, for example — who rectify the errors, not the police or prosecutors. To retain the death penalty in the face of the demonstrable failures of the system is unacceptable, especially since there are no strong overriding reasons to favor the death penalty.
Prisoners are executed in the United States by any one of five methods; in a few jurisdictions the prisoner is allowed to choose which one he or she prefers:. The traditional mode of execution, hanging , is an option still available in Delaware, New Hampshire and Washington. Death on the gallows is easily bungled: If the drop is too short, there will be a slow and agonizing death by strangulation. If the drop is too long, the head will be torn off. Two states, Idaho and Utah, still authorize the firing squad. The prisoner is strapped into a chair and hooded. A target is pinned to the chest. Five marksmen, one with blanks, take aim and fire. Throughout the twentieth century, electrocution has been the most widely used form of execution in this country, and is still utilized in eleven states, although lethal injection is the primary method of execution.
The condemned prisoner is led — or dragged — into the death chamber, strapped into the chair, and electrodes are fastened to head and legs. When the switch is thrown the body strains, jolting as the voltage is raised and lowered. Often smoke rises from the head. There is the awful odor of burning flesh. No one knows how long electrocuted individuals retain consciousness. In , the electrocution of John Evans in Alabama was described by an eyewitness as follows:. the first jolt of volts of electricity passed through Mr. Evans' body. It lasted thirty seconds. Sparks and flames erupted … from the electrode tied to Mr. Evans' left leg. His body slammed against the straps holding him in the electric chair and his fist clenched permanently.
The electrode apparently burst from the strap holding it in place. A large puff of grayish smoke and sparks poured out from under the hood that covered Mr. Evans' face. An overpowering stench of burnt flesh and clothing began pervading the witness room. Two doctors examined Mr. Evans and declared that he was not dead. Evans was administered a second thirty second jolt of electricity. The stench of burning flesh was nauseating. More smoke emanated from his leg and head. Again, the doctors examined Mr. At that time, I asked the prison commissioner, who was communicating on an open telephone line to Governor George Wallace, to grant clemency on the grounds that Mr.
Evans was being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. The request …was denied. At , the doctors pronounced him dead. The execution of John Evans took fourteen minutes. The introduction of the gas chamber was an attempt to improve on electrocution. In this method of execution the prisoner is strapped into a chair with a container of sulfuric acid underneath. The chamber is sealed, and cyanide is dropped into the acid to form a lethal gas. Execution by suffocation in the lethal gas chamber has not been abolished but lethal injection serves as the primary method in states which still authorize it. In a panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California where the gas chamber has been used since ruled that this method is a "cruel and unusual punishment.
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens:. A few seconds later he again looked in my direction. His face was red and contorted as if he were attempting to fight through tremendous pain. His mouth was pursed shut and his jaw was clenched tight. Don then took several more quick gulps of the fumes. His face and body turned a deep red and the veins in his temple and neck began to bulge until I thought they might explode. After about a minute Don's face leaned partially forward, but he was still conscious.
Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Death Penalty — The Death Penalty: Pros and Cons. The death penalty is an issue that has the United States quite divided. While there are many supporters of it, there is also a large amount of opposition. Currently, there are thirty-one states in which the death penalty is legal and nineteen states that have abolished it. I believe the death penalty should be legal throughout the nation. There are many reasons as to why I think the death penalty should be legalized in all states, including deterrence, retribution, and morality; and because opposing arguments do not hold up, I will refute the ideas that the death penalty is unconstitutional, irrevocable mistakes are made, and that there is a disproportionality of race and income level.
The use of capital punishment greatly deters citizens from committing crimes such as murder. They fear most death deliberately inflicted by law and scheduled by the courts…. Hence, the threat of the death penalty may deter some murderers who otherwise might not have been deterred. And surely the death penalty is the only penalty that could deter prisoners already serving a life sentence and tempted to kill a guard, or offenders about to be arrested and facing a life sentence. This was due to other possible murderers being deterred from committing murder after realizing that other criminals are executed for their crimes.
Capital punishment also acts as a deterrent for recidivism the rate at which previously convicted criminals return to committing crimes after being released ; if the criminal is executed he has no opportunity to commit crimes again. Some may argue that there is not enough concrete evidence to use deterrence as an argument for the death penalty. The reason some evidence may be inconclusive is that the death penalty often takes a while to be carried out; some prisoners sit on death row for years before being executed. This can influence the effectiveness of deterrence because punishments that are carried out swiftly are better examples to others. Although the death penalty is already effective at deterring possible criminals, it would be even more effective if the legal process were carried out more quickly instead of having inmates on death row for years.
The death penalty also carries out retribution justly. When someone commits a crime it disturbs the order of society; these crimes take away lives, peace, and liberties from society. Giving the death penalty as a punishment simply restores order to society and adequately punishes the criminal for his wrongdoing. Retribution also serves justice for murder victims and their families. The death penalty puts the scales of justice back in balance after they were unfairly tipped towards the criminal. The morality of the death penalty has been hotly debated for many years. Those opposed to the death penalty say that it is immoral for the government to take the life of a citizen under any circumstance.
It is immoral to not properly punish a person who has committed such a horrendous crime. The criminal is also executed humanely; in no way is he subjected to torture or any form of cruelty. All states that use the death penalty use lethal injection; the days of subjecting a prisoner to hanging or the electric chair are long gone in the US. Inmates are first given a large dose of an anesthetic so they do not feel any pain; this proves that the process is made as humane as possible so the inmates do not physically suffer. Although the issue of morality is very personal for many people, it is important to see the facts and realize that capital punishment does take morality into account and therefore is carried out in the best way possible.
The eighth amendment to the United States Constitution prevents cruel and unusual punishment. Many opponents of capital punishment say that execution is cruel and unusual punishment and therefore violates the Constitution. As was stated earlier, the recipient of the death penalty is treated humanely and is not tortured in any way, shape, or form. After the anesthetic is administered the person feels no pain; the only part of the process that could be considered painful is when the IV is inserted, but that is done in hospitals on a daily basis and no one is calling it unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the death penalty as constitutional in cases they have presided over.
In the case of Furman v. The Supreme Court has not found capital punishment to be unconstitutional, and therefore this argument for abolition is invalid. Capital punishment can be a difficult topic to approach because people tend to have extreme views on it. The death penalty is an asset to society; it deters potential criminals as well as serves retribution to criminals, and is in no way immoral. The arguments against the death penalty often do not hold up when examined more closely. It is important that the nation is united on this issue, rather than having some states use capital punishment while others do not. The death penalty can be an extremely useful tool in sentencing criminals that have committed some of the worst crimes known to society.
It is imperative that we begin to pass legislation making capital punishment legal throughout the United States so that justice can be served properly. Pros and Cons of Death Penalty Twenty-nine states in the United States have legalized the death penalty. That means that twenty-one of our states are smart enough to keep it banned for the sense of our society now-a-days. Statistically, there has been over fifteen thousand killings with the death penalty since it has been originated. No one wants to be sent to death row; it is by far the most cruel and inhuman punishment anyone could ever receive.
In this world, there are eight different types of execution still being used. The United States being able to use three of these methods: Lethal injection, Electrocution, and Gas inhalation. Other Countries around the world still use the processes of Hanging, Shooting, Beheading, Stoning, and Crucifixion. Most of these areas have some kind of legal government utilizing which methods to use, if multiple is available. Hanging was abandoned in the United States when a hanging went in the wrong direction and instead of the spinal cord being severed, it was either a decapitation or slowly strangling to death.
Most of which had their own problems as well, but still being more reliable. Approximately 2 percent of them were botched, some of them when the condemned caught on fire and filled the death chamber with smoke and the smell of burning flesh. The gas chamber, first used in , proved to be even less reliable. More than 5 percent of executions in the gas chamber were botched when the gas did not produce rapid loss of consciousness and witnesses watched as the condemned suffered an agonizingly slow asphyxiation. We also considered that the average age for men and women are both around seventy-four to seventy-eight years of life. We have a lot more people who think about what they do and decide they want to live over dying any day. As a reaction to capital punishment, there are families out there who suffer from losses of children, loved ones, and family members.
Not letting those who are on death row have an equal trial is in violation of amendment 14 and 6 of the Constitution. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Amendment 6 states, in brief words, that everyone is guaranteed a fair trial before sentencing or coming up with a solution. It is wrong and unfair, not to mention the most unusual and cruel punishment that the world has ever had. In the opinion of most people, capital punishment should be legal because someone people just deserve to die from doing morbidly horrific things.
Me as a human with choices, I decided to be on that lower sided percentage and refuse to let people just murder anyone they want on death row, whether innocent or not. This phrase should mean in all criminal cases that someone objected to law deserves and receives a trial to be proven guilty or innocent. In a final look at this argument between right and wrong, it seems to be capital punishment is also a way to keep population at good standards. So many people being on death row every year are killed and left behind which cuts the population down and makes it easier for the new and upcoming generations to change things.
While most adults on death row are between 20 to 50, give or take few in different locations. Capital punishment cannot be administered to meet these conditions. Another side would be that lethal injection is used most because it has been said to be the easiest and less painful way to kill a criminal. That being known it is used the most on people but there has recently been killings that are interrupted because the dosage was gave to them wrong or it was the wrong medicine, making it a not-so-easy way of killing these people and making it an aggressive or slow way to die.
In conclusion, Capital Punishment is wrong. Everyone deserves to have a fair trial whether innocent or guilty. If only one person tries to help an innocent criminal on death row, it could take up to fifteen years just for them to get everyone else to switch sides. No one deserves to be thrown into death row without a fair trial and someone actually helping them. No one deserves to be killed. Everyone has a path and it never ends on death row. Spelling, punctation, and grammar are accurate. Well done! A few things to bear in mind for future development: Personal pronouns are not normally used in academic writing. The introduction should begin with Show more Remember: This is just a sample from a fellow student.
Starting from 3 hours delivery. Keywords: Capital punishment,Prison,Lethal injection,Crime,Murder,Death penalty Should the death penalty be abolished? Essay on this question can be quite controversial, no matter what side of the argument is chosen. But [ The "death penalty" should never exist in the first place. The "death penalty" is wrong.. It should not be given to anybody, whether they are under the age of 18 or not. It is morally wrong and will be the doom of America, The [ Capital punishment is can divided into different types, such as: electric [ Death penalties, also known as capital punishments, are a type of punishment that have been used throughout history to ensure the prevention of further attempted crimes from the convicted criminals.
This type of punishment is [ There is no avoiding the attention fixated on crime in South Africa currently. The death penalty is used in 53 countries including China and 31 states within the USA to punish capital offenses. The death penalty was abolished in Britain in , but there has been much debate over if it should be [ There are millions of guns throughout the United States. People obviously have different views on how one should properly use and gun and why. Unfortunately, it seems that these guns very often fall into the wrong hands and [ We will occasionally send you account related emails.
The Cons of the Death Penalty Essay,Life Without Parole Essay
WebThe Cons of the Death Penalty Essay. Death Penalty: The Eighth Amendment To The United States. First in foremost, the use of capital punishment harms the innocent. WebFeb 21, · The death penalty is one of the cruelest types of criminal punishment, which is performed with the help of different methods such as hanging, electrocution, and lethal WebApr 21, · In this essay, it will show the existence of the death penalty can be justified. Some of the biggest issues with the death penalty are: social safety, family members of WebThere are several effective arguments against the death penalty, including the fact that some people have been executed, and the government has later discovered their WebFeb 7, · There are many reasons as to why I think the death penalty should be legalized in all states, including deterrence, retribution, and morality; and because opposing arguments do not hold up, I will refute the ideas that the death penalty is WebFeb 1, · It should be in the states with the death penalty, but the opposite is the case. The states which have the most executions also have the highest murder rates. In recent ... read more
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. In Great Britain, it was abolished except for cases of treason in ; France abolished it in One of the last ones occurred in in Kentucky, when 20, people gathered to watch the hanging of a young African American male. His face and body turned a deep red and the veins in his temple and neck began to bulge until I thought they might explode. Log In Sign Up. When a crime is committed most assume that the only acceptable consequence is to be put to death rather than thinking of another form of punishment.
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, cons of death penalty essay. The Death Penalty. Many individuals have been executed without physical evidence, how are we to know that the individual is actually guilty? An execution is a violent public spectacle of official homicide, and one that endorses killing to solve social problems — the worst possible cons of death penalty essay to set for the citizenry, and especially children. It was not my intent nor do I believe that of the voters who overwhelmingly enacted the death penalty law in html [accessed 15 August ] [ hereinafter Second Optional Protocol]. His mouth was pursed shut and his jaw was clenched tight.
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