...Death Penalty and Lethal Injection CRJ 412 Research Methods in Criminal Justice The death penalty has been in practice prior to America being discovered. Executing of an offender has been a popular method of punishment in past history for numerous different crimes. Some of the crimes that could result in execution were stealing, treason, rape and murder. Lynching, hanging, burning, firing squad, lethal gas, electrocution and lethal injection are just some methods of execution that have been used to carry out a death sentence. Some of the past executions have been held in the public so everyone could watch. There have been cases brought against the methods of execution therefore violating the Eighth Amendment, of cruel or unusual inflicted punishment. Lethal injection as a method of execution can be viewed as cruel and unusual punishment, violating the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. There has been and always will be debates about the death penalty if it is fair or cruel and unusual punishment. Also, there are always going to be debates and Supreme Court Cases held to see if the methods of execution of the death penalty violate human beings’ rights. One early case, State of Louisiana ex rel. Francis v Resweber (1947) ruled that it was not cruel or unusual punishment to send a man to be electrocuted after he had already been placed in the chair, but had not died due to mechanical fault (Harrison & Melville, 2007). The Supreme...
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...It is not right for children to go to jail children who commit violent crimes should not be tried as adults.Death penalties can get out of hand and be unnecessary at the moment when children do not understand what they have done, they get into therapy or observed places to make them realize what they did was wrong.Children are too young to live on their own, vote, have a job or buy drinks or cigarettes at a store, but all of a sudden they make one mistake and get to the point where they get punished for even a lifetime.While they are in jail for their crime, they cannot defend themselves there.Too many bigger/older people harass, violate, mistreat and pick on others imagine how it would be with the younger kids. Young ones who commit violent crimes should not...
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...this time period there were 25 different crimes that resulted in the death penalty. As time progressed the death penalty became more of a commonplace. Throughout the centuries following King Hammurabi’s reign, the death penalty can be seen in many regions of the world. The death penalty was first seen four centuries after King Hammurabi in the Hittite Code; then in the Seventh Century B.C.'s Draconian Code of Athens, and finally in the Fifth Century B.C.'s Roman Law of the Twelve Tablets. What we would now call cruel and unusual, their methods of execution included crucifixion, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and impalement. In the Tenth Century A.D punishment by execution became a central law of the land, starting off with 222 crimes punishable by death and then reduced to around a 100. Because America’s origins trace back to Britain our laws were influenced theirs, the death penalty being one of them. This influence of the death penalty on our nation by Britain is where issues arise. Times have changed and so have the people living within them. Where once punishment by death received little to no outcry of wrongful doing, now many believe it is an unjust and horrid act of violence. Those who oppose Capital Punishment tend to argue that taking the life of a criminal is not humane. They say that by taking a criminals life we are no worse than the criminal himself. Bryan Stevenson, death penalty attorney, puts it as follows- “The logic of gratuitously killing someone...
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...4UI-01 How Can This Be Justified? When Lesley Parrott states “Take a life in order to show people that it is wrong to take one,” she summarizes the thoughts of many who disagree with the death penalty by focusing on its cons. In her essay within the book The Writer Within: Dialogue and Discovery, Lesley Parrot discusses many points that convince readers to be against the death penalty. As the essay begins, one of the many points she discusses is the suffering of the victims’ families Not only does the family of the victim suffer, so does the family of the potentially innocent human who has been condemned to death row for even long periods of time, agonizingly waiting for their day to come. This is the case of Mathew Poncelet in the film Dead Man Walking. Although Mathew’s actions are in fact unforgivable, he deserved to be given a fair chance to live their lives regardless of their crimes. Attorneys are very difficult to afford and due to the fact that he was poverty stricken, Mathew was unable to afford one during his court hearing. This is the case for many and just like those before him who were treated unjustly, he has an under qualified, under equipped and unsatisfactory attorney appointed to him. Without the chance to properly defend himself, he was sentenced to the death penalty without even a second thought. Despite the fact that Mathew Poncelet was in the end guilty, those before him might not have been- but they never got the chance to defend themselves. Throughout...
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...Death penalty, defined one way, it is the process of enacting justice to someone who took away another person’s life; defined in another way, it is a glorified form of murder. Is it essential to run execution? This has been a controversial issue for a long time, yet no one has come up with an exact answer. Yes, indeed, those people should pay for what they have done; and yes, those people deserve death for killing another person. But is death penalty ethical? Although execution is legal by law in certain areas, there is no doubt at all that executing is murdering as well. Would there not be a better way for punishment rather than death penalty? The answer is yes. In Canada, for example, life imprisonment has been used to replace capital punishment since 1976. Because Canada is a country which takes protection of human rights seriously, it realized that execution is inhumane and immoral. It does not mean we have to kill a person to make him pay for his crime. In addition, the prisoner should have spent the rest of his life revising what he has done wrong. Shooting him to death only frees him from taking responsibility. This does not leave any time for him to think about why he should be regretful. Those countries which execute death penalty also have to consider one thing: if the person being executed is the only one who raises his or her family, then how were rests of the family members supposed to live on their own? This problem would not really matter to people who...
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...murderer and he committed a cruel and heinous crime. Some people would argue that he deserved the death penalty and the victim’s family would most likely agree. A specific example for the movie was when one of the victim’s father says to Matthew “I’m going to watch you fry and sizzle” he clearly believes that Matthew deserves to be put to death. This relates to the “eye for an eye” and a “tooth for a tooth” theory. The victim’s father is definitely pro death penalty. Another argument presented in the movie was that he wasn’t a good person and he took a life therefore his life should be taken. 2. Sister Helen Prejean believed that there was a serious moral cost of state-sanctioned executions. She believed that it wasn’t the government’s place to decide who should live or die. She believed that it was up to god. Sister Prejean was also an anti-death penalty advocate and she believed that life in prison was a better alternative for people who committed serious crimes. She really tried to stress the fact that often times there are many mitigating factors that lead to someone committing a crime. For example, in the case of Matthew he had a really rough childhood....
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...designed to be more ethical and humane in the United States. Whether it is a firing squad, hanging, electric chair, gas chamber, or lethal injection, the death penalty has been a swift solution to deter and resolve crimes. In a recent execution in Oklahoma a problem occurred that led to the 43 minute suffering of Clayton Lockett. The constitution protects the American people from cruel and unusual punishment which is debatable in this case after acknowledging he raped and murdered a young girl. I am a firm believer in the constitution as well as capital punishment and have no moral problem with how this execution was carried out. This botched execution has sparked immense pressure from people to bring an end to the death penalty. It is portrayed as inhumane and unnecessary especially when it does not go as planned. The people arguing against capital punishment claim that it costs upwards of $4.2 million dollars per death sentence and is cheaper to simply imprison them (To Execute or Not). Money is the main reason behind many states not utilizing the death sentence. The death penalty may also put innocent lives at risk of being executed. The innocent victims of these heinous criminals will likely feel a great sense of closure by witnessing the execution of the offender. When someone has committed a crime worthy of the death penalty, it is the perfect solution to clean up our society. The real problem with capital punishment in America is the taxing cost both legally and politically...
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...Timothy Patterson Criminal Justice 101 Professor Davis February 13, 2013 The Death Penalty Is Reasonable- A Life For A Life The death penalty is an increasingly hot and pressing issue in the United States because there are many strongly opinionated people and no one can seem to find a solution that will satisfy both sides of this issue. Looking at the death penalty system in action, it is fundamentally flawed in use and there is a serious risk of executing innocent people. Many unjust convictions such as lack of eyewitness identification, false confessions and the access to have DNA testing has caused our country’s criminal justice system to convict many innocent individuals, who have been sentenced to death. In the United States of America, there are 3,146 known death row inmates. There are 29 states with current death penalty statutes, as well as federal civilian and military legal systems, and 21 states without death penalty statutes. Since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976, there have been a total of 1,307 executions (NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Quarterly Report, October 1, 2012). According to James Brockway (Guest Blogger, Death Penalty Focus), “Exoneration has been incredibly important for those who oppose capital punishment. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 138 death row inmates have had their convictions overturned… While organizations like the Innocence Project put their tireless...
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...THE DEATH PENALTY Death penalty is an issue that brings a lot of controversy in our society, this is an important topic because the life of a person is on the hands of a group of people that decide whether this individual should live or die. Different opinions exist in our society about this action, because some citizens believe that these murderers should pay with their lives for the crimes they committed. On the other hand, another group of people think that the death penalty is a cruel and unnecessary punishment that should not exist, because two wrongs does not make one right. If we kill a person no matter what crime he or she committed, we become murderers. Anthony G. Amsterdam wrote in his article Capital Punishment “death penalty is a fancy phrase for legally killing people” and I agree with his statement. The principle of an eye for an eye should not exist, because the criminal will never learn the lesson that he or she did a big mistake, further more this criminal will not get a chance to redeem himself or herself. Is our court system perfect? The answer is no. What happens if the system finds somebody guilty of a crime by mistake? And this person is sentenced to death. As a society what should we do if after somebody was kill under the death penalty and new evidence shows that he or she was innocent? For example “Timothy Evans, an innocent man whose execution was among the reasons for the abolition of the death penalty in Great Britain”. A mistake of this magnitude...
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...Capital punishment is the legal process when a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for their crimes. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a social justice organization that’s actively working to abolish capital punishment in the United States. The ACLU does this by working within legislature to change laws to improve the lives of those in need of help. The ACLU stands against capital punishment and is justified in doing so because it interferes with the first amendment, being the right to life. Capital punishment cases also clog the court system with appeals and hearings, and aren’t any cheaper for the state than a life in prison without the chance for parole charge would be. The ACLU is founded on protecting our civil rights, which include our right to life. Capital punishment violates the right to life provided by Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (ACLU Death Penalty par.1). While the right to life is more commonly referred to in the issue of abortion, it still applies in the issue of capital punishment. Article 3 of the UDHR does not specify that it is to only guard certain people and not others. The right to life protects all people, criminal or not, and we cannot take away their right to life just because they are brought into custody. What would make someone’s life less important or less worthy than how we see our own? What makes us, as a society, think we are above one another and have the right to execute...
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...Death Penalty Argument 1) In this letter, the author expresses their support of the use of the death penalty, making the claim that it is morally justified and serves as a deterrent. 2) In support of his argument, the author provides several pieces of evidence and arguments to support his claim. To support his claim, he initially argues that the death penalty serves as a deterrent and is morally justifiable. He continues his argument on morality by stating his belief that when one has raped and murdered a child, the person deserves to die and no longer has the right to life. In this letter, the author justifies the moral use of the death penalty with a quote from President Obama, insinuating that there are such crimes so heinous that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of outrage and meting out the ultimate punishment. Following that, the...
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...Benchmark Assignment The Death Penalty Picot pg. 1 Keith e picot 3/28/2012 Criminal Procedure Benchmark assignment Mr. Jessie Torres The Death Penalty in America An unreasonable and Inhumane Deterrent The Death penalty has been a staple in U.S. justice system since its inception in 1608, when Captain George Kendall, in the Jamestown Colony of Virginia was ‘executed by firing squad for treason’. Even though controversial this punishment has no place in America. Death Penalty is unreasonable and inhumane deterrent for crime and should be abolished. First of all. data shows a racial bias towards black crimes against white victims. In addition, it is less expensive to house inmates than to execute them. Finally many countries have abolished the Death Penalty deeming it merciless I am a person that does not believe in the death penalty. The main thing we Question is, what purpose it serves for us to put another person on death row. By killing another human being it wont bring back that victim they murder. People against this method realize capital punishment does not stop criminals from killing or stop them from their mischief act. Many states that are against this method argue that the death penalty is both cruel and unnecessary that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who done great evil. Prosecutor need to take time out to make sure that...
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...Should the Death Penalty be abolished? The international trend of stopping executing and abolishing the death penalty is obvious. For example, in 2011, there are nearly 200 countries in the world but only 21 countries execute the death penalty. In addition, 140 countries have already abolished the death penalty legally and practically (i.e. stop executing the death penalty). In the US, 17 states abolished the death penalty or sentenced the death penalty unconstitutional, including New Jersey (2007), New York (2007), New Mexico (2009), Illinois (2011) and Connecticut (2012). There are also a numbers of states that have suspended executions for many years. In 2007, United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution for the first time to implore all the members of the United Nations to stop using the death penalty. Since then, the United Nations General Assembly also declared the similar resolutions in 2008 and 2010 respectively and the most recent one was made in December 20, 2012. In 2007, 104 countries voted in favor of the resolution, while 54 voted against it. By 2012, there were 111 countries in favor, 41 countries against. The death penalty has two dimensions: one is the humanity between the individual life, another one is the rights among social communities and social members. The first dimension is a punishment executed by a specific public institution to the murderer once the murder happened between the the social members. In this dimension, the trace of the...
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...Yes, I believe in the death penalty. Criminals that have spent years in prison sometimes can turn very heartless and some will never change. I think the death penalty should be reinstated in the U.K. Sure there are several reasons to why people would be against it, like the fact that an inmate can spend several years on death row and receive trials to try and get them off during their waiting time. And, yes, innocent people could be executed, but it’s not as a big of a number as people make it out to be. The death penalty does deteriorate crime, specifically homicide rates, but when a convicted murderer is released from prison there is a 90%+ chance they will re-commit, only because they have been deprived from the outside world for such a long time and there are new things for them to introduced to, which may intimidate them. But at least when you execute the inmate, it’s one less person regular society has to worry about. People like them that are serving time just don’t change. Just put them to death so they cant terrorize society anymore. Surely, it would be a win win situation anyway, because their suffering would cease as well. The medieval philosopher, Thomas Aquinas made this point very clear: “Therefore, if any man is dangerous to the community and is subverting it by some sin, the treatment to be commended in his execution in order to preserve the common good… Therefore to kill a man who retains his natural worthiness is intrinsically evil, although it may be justifiable...
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... The death penalty should be abolished because it has not proven to deter violent crime, protect people from heinous crimes, or become an economically effective way to punish those who have committed evil crimes. Nor does it achieve justice for the victims and their families. Think of yourself and your loved ones, what if someone you loved was brutally murdered or tortured and then killed, would you want to get your justification by knowing the person who not only took your loved one before their time but took them in such as heinous way was going to not only have a chance to say goodbye to those they love but get put to death easily and pain free? That in no way sounds like justice but more like imaginary slaps in the face or kick in the guts. Your loved one didn’t deserve to be treated in such an evil manner, they were an innocent victim so why should the assailant be treated like the innocent one? Do not let the gratification of instantaneous relief of the death penalty drive you away from what real justification can feel like. Watching the person who destroyed the lives of innocent people rot in jail for the remainder of their life will be more gratification in the long run than feeling better for only those three minutes you are watching them become another celebrity by having their death shown on television, much like the death of Timothy McVeigh, this not only glorified the assailant but demeaned the victims and their families by making the action of his death look more...
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