...29th 2015 Should the death penalty be abolished or retained? Capital punishment, or the death penalty, has been using for thousands of years. In the last two centuries, as people have realized the importance of human rights, debates over capital punishment have never stopped. More and more people join the campaign against capital punishment, while the others defend it. However, either abolishing the death penalty or retaining it has inextricable problems. My opinion is that capital punishment will vanish from this planet someday in the future, but for a long span of time from now, to abolish it or not depends on the social situations of different countries. People, who are against capital punishment, and advocate replacing it with lifetime imprisonment, list five reasons why they condemn it. Right to life is the first punch. In The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the constitution states, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”. Among all the human rights, right to life is the cornerstone and the carrier of all the other human rights. Deprivation of the right to life is equivalent to deprivation of all the rights, which is inhumane in modern society. On the other hand, capital punishment is a product of the old barbaric concept “an eye for an eye, a life for a life;” and it is actually vengeance killing. Nowadays, most societies do not agree with vengeance killing. Such a brute act does nothing but more harm. Criminals should be punished...
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...CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: SHOULD IT BE ABOLISHED? Capital Punishment: Meaning Punishment can be defined as suffering, loss, pain or penalty inflicted upon an individual by a legal authority, as a consequence of certain acts of commission and omission. Punishment has two aspects. First is ‘utilitarian’ in which punishment is used as a tool for increasing happiness of the society by pointing out to the criminal the wrongfulness of his crime as well presenting the punishment as a deterrent to both the criminal and the society for not repeating the crime. Second aspect is ‘retributive’ which serves as a consolation to the aggrieved or his kin that the criminal has been adequately punished. Capital punishment is the ultimate punishment in which life of a criminal is taken away by a legal authority under a process established by the law. International Scenario Although, UN “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” does not say anything explicitly about death penalty, Article 5 of the said declaration prohibits torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Activists have been arguing that death penalty is cruel and inhuman and hence covered under this article. The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989, provides for the total abolition of the death penalty except in times of war or imminent threat of war. Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human...
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...Capital Punishment Many distinctive doctrines in criminal law originated in efforts to restrict the number of capital crimes and executions. For instance, in the late 18th century, when all murder in the United States was punishable by death, Pennsylvania pioneered in dividing murder into two categories. The state enacted laws that authorized punishment of first-degree murder by death, while second-degree murder was punishable by imprisonment only. Elsewhere, penal codes uniformly required death for certain serious crimes. In these jurisdictions, discretionary powers to commute death sentences gradually expanded. (A commutation substitutes a lesser penalty for a more severe one—for example, replacing execution with a life sentence.) Today in many nations, including Turkey and Japan, the death penalty remains legal but the number of executions has declined over time. Although many jurisdictions limited imposition of the death penalty, no government had formally abolished capital punishment until Michigan did so in 1846. Within 20 years Venezuela (1863) and Portugal (1867) had formally eliminated the practice as well. By the beginning of the 20th century the death sentence had been abolished in a handful of nations, such as Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Norway, and The Netherlands. Although not formally eliminated, it had fallen into disuse in many others, including Brazil, Cape Verde, Iceland, Monaco, and Panama. The defeat of the Axis powers provided a foundation for...
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...Capital Punishment Many distinctive doctrines in criminal law originated in efforts to restrict the number of capital crimes and executions. For instance, in the late 18th century, when all murder in the United States was punishable by death, Pennsylvania pioneered in dividing murder into two categories. The state enacted laws that authorized punishment of first-degree murder by death, while second-degree murder was punishable by imprisonment only. Elsewhere, penal codes uniformly required death for certain serious crimes. In these jurisdictions, discretionary powers to commute death sentences gradually expanded. (A commutation substitutes a lesser penalty for a more severe one—for example, replacing execution with a life sentence.) Today in many nations, including Turkey and Japan, the death penalty remains legal but the number of executions has declined over time. Although many jurisdictions limited imposition of the death penalty, no government had formally abolished capital punishment until Michigan did so in 1846. Within 20 years Venezuela (1863) and Portugal (1867) had formally eliminated the practice as well. By the beginning of the 20th century the death sentence had been abolished in a handful of nations, such as Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Norway, and The Netherlands. Although not formally eliminated, it had fallen into disuse in many others, including Brazil, Cape Verde, Iceland, Monaco, and Panama. The defeat of the Axis powers provided a foundation...
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...Penalty Death penalty, from a legal perspective, is the killing of a person by a state authority through judicial process as a punishment for an offense. The capital punishment has been used by nearly all societies and the use of it extends to the beginning of recorded history. People believe that if we owe one’s money, we must pay back for it, so as one’s life. This kind of idea has deeply carved in many people’s mind for a long time. Compared with Christianity, who are strictly on the side of abolishment of the death penalty, Chinese tend to in favor of the saying of an eye for an eye and teeth for teeth. According to Amnesty International, at least 23 countries were known to had executions in 2010 and at least 17,000 people worldwide were sentenced to death. In addition, there are countries which do not publish information on the use of capital punishment, most significantly China, which is estimated to execute hundreds of people each year. Although there are many execution in China each year in the present day, there was a time in Tang Dynasty when the death penalty was abolished. This was in the year 747, enacted by Emperor Xuanzong. Depending on the severity of the crime, a punishment of severe scourging with the thick rod or of exile to the remote Lingnan region might take the place of capital punishment. However the death penalty was restored only 12 years later in 759 in response to the An Lushan Rebellion. At this time in China only...
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...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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...penal jurisprudence in abolishing the capital punishment. This is to counter the plenary provisions of Article 5 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966 and its protocol in 1989 where the State parties believed that abolition of death penalty should be in the scale of enhancement of human dignity and progressive development of human rights and recalling Article 3 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted on 10th December, 1948 as well as Article 21 of our Constitution.1 It can be judicially said “I don’t punish you for killing the man but so that the other cannot be killed.” That is, the chief aim of capital punishment is to make deterrent to others for same crime . Now this concept is having a new direction. The Supreme Court and High Courts in India interpret the cases before giving the death sentence as rarest of rare cases. The Court moves its eye also for other aspects of society. The landmark cases where death sentences were awarded in India are Ranga Billa case2, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi Assassination case, Laxman Nayak case 3 and the lastly, it was awarded to Dhananjoy Chatterjee on 14th August, 2004 in connection with Hetal Parikh case of West Bengal after the Supreme Court affirmed the death sentence awarded by lower courts and President also refused to grant him pardon. In the year 2003, Government laid a bill in the Parliament which proposed to add a provision of the punishment, like death sentence in the Drugs...
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...To His Excellency, The President of India, Rashtrapathi Bhavan, New Delhi – 110 001. Sub: Yours Excellency, We appreciate your initiative for creating a debate on abolishing Death Penalty in India. The points in observation note that has forwarded to Home Ministry (Source : Frontline November 5) was extra ordinary, which shows that Death Penalty will die at the earliest. WHY SHOULD WE OPPOSE THE DEATH PENALTY? The thoughts of a Man on Death Row The feelings of some one who knows that he will not be alive, say, a month from now, not because he is terminally ill, but because he will be killed by the state!. It is legitimate to ask how a person behaves when he knows that he has a specified number of days to live a specific number of mornings, afternoons, evenings and nights to live and experience before he enters the realm of the unknown. It is said that many such death row prisoners have probably after an initial period of terror and despair – become calm & collected, resigning themselves to their fate, possibly thinking that, after all, there is an afterlife, that existence in the ordinary sense of the word will not be impaired although it may take on a different form. This is probably why many death-row-prisoners turn to religions books, especially to passages which try to throw light on life after death, strong & disciplined minds are more than likely to have resource to such simulated ‘peace’ particularly so if they have transgressed...
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...Delores Jones-Brown Mark Moore Ira Schwartz Linda Teplin Franklin Zimring November 2001 The findings and opinions contained herein are those of the National Policy Committee and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the American Society of Criminology. Ronald Weitzer, Professor of Sociology, Dana Coleman, Research Assistant, and Sarah Benatar, Graduate Research Assistant at the Institute on Crime, Justice, and Corrections at George Washington University provided substantial assistance in the preparation of this document. Introduction Capital punishment is among the most hotly debated issues in American politics. Passions run high for both those who want the death penalty abolished and those who seek to preserve or expand its use. What follows is a summary of key issues in the death penalty debate, research findings on the application of capital punishment, and a discussion of policy considerations. The American Society of Criminology (ASC) is greatly concerned with the death penalty and its application in the United States. This year, ASC President Ronald Huff and the ASC Executive Board authorized the ASC’s National Policy Committee (NPC) to develop a policy paper that would focus on the death penalty issue. The ASC Board has emphasized that the NPC paper would not speak for the Society but to its membership. The recommendations contained in this report reflect a concern that the Society needs to set a research agenda that is...
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...of the death penalty, why it has created much debate, why it is not a deterrent of murder, and that it is mostly used as a political tool. There have been many studies done to both effects; the death penalty deters crime, or it does not deter crime because the previous studies were flawed. First presented is a brief history to better understand where the death penalty comes from. The next section will discuss the modern approaches to the death penalty including landmark cases that changed the way the death penalty is executed in the United States. Following this section is an explanation of deterrence and its effects, and other controversies that exist. Finally the paper will discuss the death penalty as a political tool, and why we should remedy the debates once and for all by abolishing the death penalty. There will be many studies discussed for and against the death penalty, however to introduce a different approach to this greatly researched topic, this paper will analyze the gubernatorial races from 1980-2009, and the majority view of...
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...times most governments have punished a wide variety of crimes by death and have conducted executions as a routine part of the administration of criminal law. The Age of Enlightenment was the first significant movement to abolish the death penalty. Britain was very influential in America’s use of the death penalty. The European settlers that came to the new world are the one’s that brought the practice of capital punishment, death penalty. The first execution was recorded in the Jamestown Colony of Virginia in 1608. The Divine, Moral, and Martial Laws were enacted in 1612 by the Governor of Virginia, Sir Thomas Dale. The death penalty was established for minor offenses such as killing chickens, stealing grapes, and trading with Indians. It was Cesare Beccaria’s 1767 essay, On Crimes and Punishment that caused policy makers to have a different view of the death penalty. Becarria theorized that there wasn’t any justification for the state’s to take the life of a human being. The essay led to Tuscany and Austria abolishing their policy of the death penalty as a punishment for the crimes that were committed. It also gave an authoritative voice and renewed...
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...Pros and Cons of Capital Punishment Capital punishment is a topic that anyone can count on to stir emotional discussions with plenty of opinions. In the world today, people commit horrific crimes daily. There are many who feel that those who carry out these terrible crimes deserve one fate: death. Capital punishment is used in reference to the death penalty that is issued in a judicial manner to execute those found guilty of a capital or hard offense. This according to our text is called legal punishment. Legal punishment is defined as the state-authorized imposition of some form of deprivation-of liberty, resources, or even life-upon a person justly convicted of a violation of the criminal law. (Stohr, pg 3) In this review of the pros and cons of the death penalty we will examine some different aspects of the process and allow the reader to form their own opinion. History The death penalty can be traced back a long time throughout history. The first established death penalty laws date back to the Eighteenth Century B.C. In the code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon, which gave the death penalty for 25 different crimes. This code expressed the well-known concept of lex talionis (the law of equal retaliation), which is further enunciated in the Mosaic code, the ancient law of the Hebrews, as “an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth.” (Stohr, pg. 3) During the 18th century, many philosophers like Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham wrote influential writings on prison...
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...The “Insanity” Plea The “Insanity” Plea A criminal defendant who is found to have been legally insane in the course of committing a crime is relieved the criminal responsibility by the virtue of suffering from a mental disease (Findlaw, 2015). In some cases, the accused may be sentenced to a less severe sentence or punishment after being found on the wrong side of the law because of the mental impairment. Many nations allow the insanity defense in their legal systems. However, the accused must prove to the court that they were not on their senses or acted upon uncontrolled impulse or some variety of these factors when doing the wrongful doings. The general sense of insanity plea is to provide the alleged perpetrator of the criminal offense a fair trial. The society is even in agreement with this principle in extreme cases. Nonetheless, the major challenge falls on where to draw the line. That is, the circumstances where one can be considered insane and instances when he or she is not. It is worth noting that, no matter how appealing the crime itself is, it doesn’t demonstrate the level of insanity. Today, the legal systems use way too much of the insanity defenses. While there are many questionable defense tactics, insanity plea targets to protect the rights of the accused and further the course of justice. This paper discusses the insanity plea as used in the legal systems in the present times. What is the main purpose of insanity plea? How did it find...
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...The Capital Punishment Controversy Author(s): William O. Hochkammer, Jr. Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science, Vol. 60, No. 3 (Sep., 1969), pp. 360-368 Published by: Northwestern University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1141991 . Accessed: 31/01/2013 08:39 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Northwestern University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded on Thu, 31 Jan 2013 08:39:08 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THB JOURN« OFCRIMINGLAW, CBIMINOLOGY POLZZSCIXNCE AND Copyright 1 1969by Northwestern University School of Law Vol. 60, No. 3Prsnted in U.S.A. CRIMINAI COMMENTS CASE IAW AND NOTES Prepared studentsof Northwestern by UniversitySchoolof Law underthe directionof the student members the Law School'sJournalEditorialBoard. of JULIAN ESPOSITO D STEPREN SELIGER G. Editors-in-Chief...
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...During this course on the history of Catholic Moral Theology, we have had to deal with the topic of what can and cannot change within the Catholic Church. This happened to be the title of the primary book that we used for this course. This book, by John T. Noonan, is entitled A Church That Can and Cannot Change: The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching. A theme which Noonan immediately focuses on throughout the book is one which touches many of us deeply, slavery. As a person who has studied both law and religion and who is now embarking on a study of moral theology & ethics, I was highly interested in reading what John T. Noonan a distinguished scholar -author and member of the U.S. Court of Appeals- had to say in such an arena. Having heard him lecture, I was interested to see how his viewpoint translated into this type of arena. I was not disappointed. Throughout our course we not only discussed how this work dealt with such a topic, but we also discussed our own viewpoints on this very topic. Within the following paper I will discuss the issue of slavery, in the form of a synthetic paper, and how not only how it has evolved, but also the various positions the church has had concerning such an issue. As a backdrop, I will also use what Noonan outlined in his book as well. Therefore, this paper will be in the form of a review of Noonan thoughts (which will utilize various points from my prior presentation on this topic)/synthetic paper on the issue of slavery...
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