...446 executions (Death Penalty Information Center). 1,446 people have been put to death for committing crimes such as murder and treason. The death penalty is definitely not a new prospect; far from it, first known to be practiced in the 14th century B.C.E. (Death Penalty Information Center). In fact, some describe capital punishment as a barbaric, outdated, or unsophisticated form of justice. America is, after all, one of the only developed countries that still enforces the death penalty. Others argue that it is necessary in keeping law and order and helps to deter crime. The death penalty has an interesting history, and still today there is an argument about whether or not it should continue to be enforced, possibly because of the historically discriminatory nature of the death penalty. In early colonial America, the death penalty was fairly strictly enforced....
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...punishment is the legal process whereby a person is put to death by the state, as a means of punishment for having committed a capital crime. In this essay, I will discuss some of the main advantages and disadvantages of capital punishment and whether capital punishment is a morally and ethically viable approach to punishment. I hold a firmly retentionist position and believe that the most just and fitting punishment for one who has committed a capital offence would be the death penalty. I will support my position with statistics showing that capital punishment has successfully been used to deter people from committing capital crimes. As well, I will discuss various philosophies regarding the morals of execution and punishment in general. My goal in writing this paper is not to force abolitionist thinkers to change their position with regards to capital punishment, but rather to show abolitionist thinkers that there is another way to look at capital punishment. Two of the main principles that are used to support the retentionist philosophy are deterrence and retributivism. Deterrence is the theory that the death penalty is morally just because it will deter would-be murderers from committing capital crimes, which carry a sentence of execution. Retributivism is the idea that criminals should be punished because they deserve to be punished, a robber must return what he stole while a murderer deserves to be put to death for having killed someone. The concept of deterrence is based...
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...problems and discrimination no longer prevail as an issue in twenty-first century America. Many commentators that speak to a lot of people in the country believe and discuss how they believe that race no longer matters. It is believed that we have reached the place that Martin Luther King Jr wanted us to reach. In Martin Luther King Jr’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech he went on to say that this country needed to judge people “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” (Desmond and Embirbayer, 2016) It is thought by many that we live in a color-blind society and race is no longer a problem. In a lot of ways racial disparities have improved, there is no...
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...Death Penalty Imagine yourself as a mother sitting by the window, looking at the swing set in your backyard, remembering memories of your son, an accused murdered now facing the death penalty. You know there must be some mistake. You cannot understand how your son could ever do something so terrible. Imagine yourself next as a father whose daughter was brutally murdered, and whose killer has been sentenced to the death penalty. You desire to push the button that sends the lethal drugs flowing through his veins. The death penalty has been the cause of many emotional, political and ethical debates since its inception. At what point do we as human beings agree or disagree with the Death Penalty if the victim or the offender is a family member? Should the Death Penalty still exist or should we keep offenders on Death Row for life to rehabilitate them? With the Death Penalty in America dating back to Jamestown Virginia in 1608 with the first recorded execution of Captain George Kendall, the question that remains today is, should the Death Penalty be legal? With the Death Penalty still in effect in 34 states, this raises the question, if violent crimes are down in the states that don’t have the Death Penalty why is it still in existence? When an offender commits a violent crime, it is the responsibility of our government to punish the offender, and keep the rest of us safe. There are many factors the government has to consider when sentencing a...
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...Coday Mr. Johnson English 102, 10:00 2 Febuary 2015 Request for Your Final Meal? There are two industrial countries that still have the death penalty in effect-the United States and Japan. Oxford Dictionary defines the death penalty as “The punishment of execution, administered to someone legally convicted of a capital crime”. These countries remain in the minority nations in the world that still promote the death penalty for certain crimes. Numerous citizens see the penalty as barbaric and against American values, but the death penalty has been around for some time. There is not a guarantee the criminals that are being put to death were not innocent from the beginning. Capital punishment was brought to these shores by the earliest colonial governments in the seventeenth century. The criminal law developed here was little more than a series of variations, colony by colony, on the law of England, the mother country. All the colonies authorized public executions by hanging as a mandatory punishment for various crimes. Reasons we should eliminate the death penalty is that utilizing the death penalty will cost the tax payers 2-5 times more capital versus keeping the prisoner in jail for their life. The reason of this is that there will be an “endless number of appeals, and additional required procedures” (Balanced Politics). The death penalty violates the “Cruel and unusual” clause in the Bill of Rights. The Bill or Rights is the foundation this country was built on, and the reason...
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...The debate concerning the death penalty has been ongoing for decades. The central question is whether capital punishment should be retained or abolished worldwide. While the death penalty continues to be used today, most countries have eliminated it in their criminal justice systems. One substantial country that continues to use the death penalty is America. Capital punishment is significant because it permits individuals to be killed lawfully. The death penalty carries enormous power around the legal system in addition to the persons that are accused of serious crimes. The purpose of this paper is to find out the diverse arguments surrounding capital punishment that has led some countries against it and others for it? This will be done by...
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...The Impact of the Death Penalty Political Science 1101 June 12, 2012 The Impact of the Death Penalty In our society today, there are various reasons why we have to punish the criminals so that they would learn their lesson for the crime that they committed and stop committing such crimes. There are several different ways to punish the criminals and one that has been receiving a lot of attention in the 21st century is the death penalty. The discussion about the death penalty has been going on ever since the early days but the publics’ opinion about this matter has been changing. While some people might support the idea of the death penalty for they may feel that it is fair for one to be sentenced to death and be killed if they kill others. The topic of the death penalty is a moral issue and it just basically depends on whom you ask to get a better understanding of whether it is just or unjust punishment. Although the percentage of Americans in favor of the death penalty has fluctuated significantly over the years, eighty percent of Republicans support the death penalty. Democrats are more likely to oppose the death penalty while Republicans will support the death penalty because they consider it a necessary deterrence to crime. However Harrison and Harris noted, “America prides itself on being a human rights leader, but “since 1973, states have released more than 107 prisoners from death row after evidence...
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...the first known case of the death penalty in the American colonies happened in the James town colony in 1608 when George Kendall was executed for spying for the Spanish (Green, Melissa S.,compiler. (1998-2009). Focus on the Death Penalty). Capital Punishment is a subject in the United States that was and still is very controversial. Many people want capital punishment to be abolished but on the other hand there are a handful of people who want capital punishment to end. The purpose of this study is to show why capital punishment should be abolished. Capital punishment needs to be abolished because there are way too many cases and executions. During the time span of the Revolutionary war, capital punishment was widely accepted. During this time 162 documented cases of capital punishment were recorded. In the nineteenth century, following that era, capital punishment had increased to 1,391 documented cases. As of April 1, 2008, there were a total of 1,099 people who received the death penalty. The State of Texas had the most cases of capital punishment with a number of 405 cases (Bureau of Justice Statistics 1-2). That is way too many cases just for one state. The States of New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Kansas recorded zero cases of capital punishment. In today’s society, 38 out of the 50 states in the United States accept the capital punishment idea. In the year 2010, over 3000 people convicted of crimes were sentenced to the death penalty (Bureau of Justice Statistics...
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...Resistance: Race and the Death Penalty in America Mark Peffley Jon Hurwitz University of Kentucky University of Pittsburgh Although there exists a large and well-documented “race gap” between whites and blacks in their support for the death penalty, we know relatively little about the nature of these differences and how the races respond to various arguments against the penalty. To explore such differences, we embedded an experiment in a national survey in which respondents are randomly assigned to one of several argument conditions. We find that African Americans are more responsive to argument frames that are both racial (i.e., the death penalty is unfair because most of the people who are executed are black) and nonracial (i.e., too many innocent people are being executed) than are whites, who are highly resistant to persuasion and, in the case of the racial argument, actually become more supportive of the death penalty upon learning that it discriminates against blacks. These interracial differences in response to the framing of arguments against the death penalty can be explained, in part, by the degree to which people attribute the causes of black criminality to either dispositional or systemic forces (i.e., the racial biases of the criminal justice system). he conventional wisdom on public opinion toward the death penalty in the United States, as summarized nicely by Ellsworth and Gross, is that people “feel strongly about the death penalty, know little about it, and...
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...Should the death penalty be illegal? This is a question America has struggled with for hundreds of years, the answer to this question varies by person. Hammurabi's code very much valued the “eye for an eye” policy but we are long past the days where the American public is judge, jury, and executioner. The justice system has a come a long way from when it first began. Does giving someone a lethal injection or strapping them to an electric chair make you any less of a murderer? A life is still a life, no matter what way you choose to look at it. The way I see it, the idea of carrying out a life sentence and having to rot in a jail cell is enough of a deterrent. The 8th Amendment of the constitution forbids against “cruel and unusual punishment”...
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...appeal the death penalty and replace it with mandatory life without parole, and the biggest advocates were Ron Briggs and Mr. Heller who would like to reverse what they have come to view as, “one of the biggest mistakes of their lives” (Danzig, 2012). A law school professor Paula Mitchell stated that by repealing the death penalty in California this would allow us to focus on cost because it is the most “politically neutral” angle (Danzig, 2012). Although there are many different opinions of capital punishment that is believed to be immoral and non-productive at times, these advocates of capital punishment have proven this to be a cost effective, and ethically correct deterrent of future murders. Mr. Briggs stated in a conversation with his father that when capital punishment was established in California 1978 it started with 300 people on death row, and now the state is up to 720 inmates who are waiting on death row (Danzig, 2012). He proceeds to make his case by saying to his republican friend by keeping the death penalty active it would do swift justice by getting the criminals and murderers through the system quickly by applying the death penalty. The American public believes that by supporting capital punishment laws this will produce a strong deterrent effect that saves lives in the present and future. There is a link between the executions that are being done and the decrease in murders from doing so. Professor Mitchell argues how expensive the death penalty is, for example...
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...The Death Penalty Controversy by James Vemard Scott Criminology 231-C Professor Raymond Kenyon 05122/2007· 2 Racism and the Death Penalty "Racism is a thing ofthe past." This statement couldn't be further from the truth if the recent statistics are to be believed. According to most of the states information, based on corrections department figures, while more whites were involved with the distribution, manufacture and consumption of illicit drugs, there were more minorities (predominantly African American) who found themselves incarcerated. Ninety four percent of the prison growth for drug offenses during the nineties was due to drug related offenses and were predominantly African American arrests. This proves that the justice system is not as fair, or just, as is believed. Given this, then, the argument can be extended to include the statement that the death penalty is even worse in its applications. According to the best estimates last year, thirteen million Americans, which accounts for seven percent of the adult population, have felony records. What this translates to, then, is a lack of voter power. Those who have served time lose their voting privileges. Greg Palast's book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, indicates that, indeed, the justice system in many states is completely biased. In many of these states, additionally, the death penalty is in full force. This is a direct reflection of criminal justice disparities so great that an astonishing one in three...
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...Punishment Works: Concepts of An Ideal Model Throughout the history of capital punishment, there have always been many criticisms of the penalty questioning everything from racial motivations to give the penalty, to why or why not juveniles should be exempt from the penalty, to the economic efficiency of it. Economically, many believe that the death penalty is a too long and drawn out process, and that giving life in prison is a more efficient process, and saves tax-payer money. In terms of discrimination, there has always been a subliminal sense against certain groups; with those being minorities and juveniles. The death penalty is supposed to only be given as a punishment based on the nature of a crime. However, certain statutes such as the minimum age law for the death penalty attempt to prevent true justice. If a juvenile is deemed competent, and their crime is heinous enough to incur the death penalty, then there is no reason as to why they should not be given it. As for minorities, there have always been questions as to why the majority of inmates on death row are African American. Although racism seems to be the easy answer, it is clear that the true reason is because many African Americans live in higher poverty areas were crime is rampant, thus making them more susceptible to committing heinous crimes. The death penalty should defend certain peoples, and should be used more often against certain races. It should merely aim to prevent those who have committed heinous...
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...Death penalty in America Death penalty debate has been a daily talk for quite some time now. This has been a very controversial that has engaged many organizations and countries in the debate. Some oppose this form of punishment based on moral and judicial grounds. These grounds include wrongful conviction base on DNA tests. Other grounds include wrongful conviction based on race. Those supporting death penalty argue that death penalty creates a feeling of safety since it instills fear in potential criminals. They also hold that those convicted despite their race actually did the crime they are convicted for. Some countries like Canada and New Zealand do not believe in the administration of death penalty as a means of punishment. Therefore, until today there is no agreed provision used by the judiciary to reach at a decision of such cases. United States, China and Japan among other countries believe that death penalty is a favorable sentence. United States has authorized death penalty in most federal governments, including the military. Some of the methods used in death penalty include the electric chair. Most of these procedures used in death penalty have been considered to be violating constitutional rights. Though fewer legislatures have been made to change these procedures, death penalty should be abolished. This is the position that is appropriate and offer should be supported. It is a racist tool of criminal punishment. Evidences explaining the reasons against this...
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...of Georgia. Protests that the evidence against him was flawed proved fruitless. Despite these cases the death penalty, on the statute books since the days of Hammurabi, is disappearing in much of the world. More than two-thirds of countries have done away with it either in law or in practice. The latest is Benin. In August the west African country committed itself to abolishing capital punishment permanently. The number of countries that carry out judicial killings fell from 41 in 1995 to 23 in 2010, according to Amnesty International, a pressure group. China (chiefly), Iran, North Korea, and Yemen accounted for most of the executions. Votes against the death penalty at the UN General Assembly have passed with big and growing majorities since 2007. Capital punishment has virtually gone in Europe (only Belarus still uses it, most recently in 2010). This year China whittled down its list of crimes punishable by death. Yet for all the apparent momentum, capital punishment remains entrenched in the Middle East and north Africa, and in parts of Asia, notably China. Jacqueline Macalesher of Penal Reform International, a lobby group, thinks the Arab spring could be a new spur to abolition, though she worries that executing political enemies may prove attractive in the short run. The other big exception is America, where two-thirds of states still have the death penalty. A leading Republican candidate for the presidency, Rick Perry, is governor of Texas, the state that uses it...
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