...Introduction The death penalty to all kind of rapist has always been one of the most hotly debatable issues among the societies. Everybody including the politicians, religious heads, media commentators, women’s rights activists, with a voice heard or unheard have an opinion it. Can death penalty check the occurrence of a heinous crime like rape? Death penalty is define as punishment of execution. Meanwhile, all kind of rapist means all type of person who commit rapes (Oxford University Press, 2013). The death penalty is conduct by two ways- Hang-strangled to death and electric chair which will give a shock punishment to the executant until he died. The recent article from the Business Time proof that this case is still being discussed. Now, in the wake of the gang rape and murder of a woman in Delhi last month that sparked widespread protests, the debate is raging in India: Should rapists be added to those 300? Should the world’s largest democracy extend the application of the death penalty to those criminals at a time when most other nations that still use capital punishment are moving away from it?; … ( Amruta Gayathri, 2013) Problem/ thesis statement The standing arguments against death penalty is that it includes all type of rapist. Insane people and drunk people should not be subjected to this death penalty as they are committing rapes with an unconscious mind. Not only that, sometimes people lodge fake report that they have been raped and some innocent people are being...
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...Death Penalty: How Newspaper Coverage Has Perpetuated Negative Stereotypes about Female Violence & Gender Roles Tonya Rice Capella University MPA 5416– Quantitative and Qualitative Research [ January 25, 2013 ] Dr. Gangl Introduction of the Problem Chimene Keitner argues that, “the uncritical resort to sex-role stereotypes pervades the trials, sentencing’s, and media reactions to women who receive the death penalty” (Keitner, 2002). Often, women who face the death penalty are portrayed in a negative light, for example, they are portrayed as deviant and/or unwomanly by the media. The media tends to focus on gender stereotypes, such as the notion that women are and should be having more virtuously than men and aspects that are not related to the crime and/or charge. In doing this, the media reinforces negative images of women and female violence. Since society and the media have difficulty understanding women who commit violent acts, they tend to emphasize certain characteristics of these women in order to dehumanize them. Under this mind set, society and the media/press is essentially arguing that normal women, who fit into traditional female gender roles, do not commit violent acts; and therefore, those who do are unwomanly or somehow deviant. As a result, the females that do commit violent acts are viewed negatively and the only way to understand their behavior is to cast them to the periphery of society and expose everything about them that goes against the status...
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...controlled. Although, when capital punishment is mentioned it brings shivers down the back of most of society. Being it is a factor of death, capital punishment, should not be taken so lightly. The term capital does not represent or signify any ideas in a negative aspect. Capital is defined as first or foremost; first rate or excellent. Punishment, on the other hand, is defined as the rough handling or penalization for a wrong doing. Neither of these terms, when mentioned individually signify anything in the negative aspect. Although when these two terms are combined there is a lot more meaning to them than just excellent or penalization. These now strictly signify, death. (Capital) Capital punishment has been a form of “disciplining” since 1750 B.C., when it was part of the code of Hammurabi. The bible itself, also prescribes death as a penalty for any of thirty crimes committed. The crimes ranged from any between murder and fornication. In the 18th century more than two hundred capital crimes were recognized, and as a result over one thousand people a year were faced with the sentence of death. (History) Nowadays in the modern-world, the death penalty, has been rekindled. Although, it is not as barbaric as it was. Now the law only allows itself the use certain types of “disciplining”. In the early 18th and 19th century the death penalty was inflicted in many ways. Some ways were, crucifixion, boiling in oil, drawing and quartering, impalement, beheading, burning...
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...Death Penalty- death as punishment for a crime also called capital punishment; putting a condemned person to death Britain influenced America's use of the death penalty more than any other country. When European settlers came to the new world, they brought the practice of capital punishment. The first recorded execution in the new colonies was that of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608. Kendall was executed for being a spy for Spain. In 1612, Virginia Governor Sir Thomas Dale enacted the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws, which provided the death penalty for even minor offenses such as stealing grapes, killing chickens, and trading with Indians. Laws regarding the death penalty varied from colony to colony. The Massachusetts Bay Colony held its first execution in 1630, even though the Capital Laws of New England did not go into effect until years later. The New York Colony instituted the Duke's Laws of 1665. Under these laws, offenses such as striking one's mother or father, or denying the "true God," were punishable by death. (Randa, 1997) The 1960s brought challenges to the fundamental legality of the death penalty. Before then, the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments were interpreted as permitting the death penalty. However, in the early 1960s, it was suggested that the death penalty was a "cruel and unusual" punishment, and therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In 1958, the Supreme Court had decided in Trop v. Dulles...
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...aspects. Capital punishment is defined as the legal infliction of the death penalty on persons convicted of a crime. It is a form of retributive justice that some feel is justified when proportionate to the crime committed. In the United States capital punishment is not intended to inflict and physical pain or torture but rather just used as another form of punishment. Many civilizations such as the ancient Romans and Egyptians used capital punishment to punish citizens form crimes such as blasphemy, treason, theft and murder. They believed in the “eye for an eye” doctrine. These ancient civilizations would perform capital punishment in the forms of stoning, burning, garroting, beheading, decapitation and crucifixion. Unlike how capital punishment is used today these methods were used to humiliate and inflict pain; they would be considered as cruel, barbaric and unusual punishment. Most deaths resulting from capital punishment in ancient civilizations were very slow instead of immediate. Two of the most popular cases of ancient capital punishment are that of Socrates and Jesus Christ. Great Britain originally brought the death penalty over to the United States and implemented it into the laws of the original 13 colonies. Although capital punishment was mostly accepted there was also opposition that it was an inhumane way to punish those who violated the law. In the late 1700s opposition to the death penalty gained enough strength to lead to important restriction on the use of...
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...United States Constitution and The State of the Death Penalty in the US As of April 1, 2008, the Death Penalty was authorized by 37 states, the Federal Government, and the U. S. Military. Those jurisdictions without the Death Penalty include 13 states and the District of Columbia. (Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin). Premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state it violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the right to be free from cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. Over two-thirds of the countries in the world 141 have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice. In the U. S., 17 states have put an end to state-sanctioned killing. Dakota Territory established the death penalty in 1865. The penalty was carried into North Dakota law at statehood. In 1915, the penalty was restricted to persons convicted of committing a first-degree murder while already under a life sentence for first-degree murder. The death penalty was abolished when North Dakota's new criminal code became effective, July 1, 1975. According to historian Frank E. Vyzralek, only one legal execution took place in the northern half of Dakota Territory in Grand Forks in 1885. Seven legal executions took place after statehood. The last one John Rooney in 1905 was the first to take place inside the prison walls at Bismarck. Previous...
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...Death Penalty Mead Shumway of Nebraska was convicted of the first degree murder of his employer's wife on circumstantial evidence and sentenced to death by jury. His last words before his execution were: "I am an innocent man. May God forgive everyone who said anything against me." The next year, the victim's husband confessed on his deathbed that he [the husband] had murdered his [own] wife (Radelet, Bedau, & Putnam, 1993). There are an uncertain numerous amount of incidents similar to the one depicted above, that have repeatedly occurred throughout the course of history. Two highly distinguishable figures in the area of capital punishment in the United States, Hugo Bedau and Michael Radelet, discovered in 1992, at least 140 cases, since 1990, in which innocent persons were sentenced to death (Hook & Kahn, 1989). In Illinois alone, 12 death row inmates have been cleared and freed since 1987. The most conclusive evidence in support of this "comes from the surprisingly large numbers of people whose convictions have been overturned and who have been freed from death" (Bedau, 1997). One out of every seven people sentenced to death row are innocent (Bedau, 1997). The numbers are disturbing, innocent people are becoming victims of the United States judicial system by its overlooked imperfections. A former president of the American Bar Association (ABA), John J. Curtin Jr., said it best when he told a congressional committee that "Whatever you think about the death penalty...
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...Respondents Sex Favor or Oppose Death Penalty for Murder Theory After conducting my analysis, there is a statistical significant between respondent sex and those who favor or oppose the death penalty for murder, which lead me to rejecting the null hypothesis. In the University of San Francisco Law School, a study was conducted by Professor Steven Shatz and Naomi Shatz. Their study suggested that gender bias is still present when it comes to decision making on the death penalty, these bias are seen from all way back to the chivalry roots. They looked at California’s murder cases, a total of 1,300 between 2003 and 2005. In the study the authors found out that gender- based influence was found in certain crimes, such as gang murders, rape, and domestic violence murders. They concluded that "The present study confirms what earlier studies have shown: that the death penalty is imposed on women relatively infrequently and that it is disproportionately imposed for the killing of women. Thus, the death penalty in California appears to be applied in accordance with stereotypes about women’s innate abilities, their roles in society, and their capacity for violence. Far from being gender neutral, the California death penalty seems to allow prejudices and stereotypes about violence and gender, chivalric values, to determine who lives and who dies" (Shat & Shatz 2011). The author also explains that “because women are stereotyped as weak, passive, and in need...
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...Pro-Death Penalty Thousands of people will attack the death penalty. They will give emotional speeches about the one innocent man or woman who might accidentally get an execution sentence. However, all of these people are forgetting one crucial element. They are forgetting the thousands of victims who die every year by the hands of heartless murderers. There are more murderers out there than people who are wrongly convicted, and that is what we must remember. I, as well as many others, have total confidence in the death penalty. It is a very beneficial component of our justice system. The death penalty saves lives. It saves live because it stops those who murder from ever murdering again. It also deters potential murderers from ever committing the crime. Unfortunately, the death penalty is currently used so rarely that it is not nearly as effective as it could be. In order for it to work, we must put it into practice more often. In recent years, crime in America has been on the rise, in particular, violent crime. This has led not only to an overcrowding of prisons in our country, but also to an increase in the number of death sentences handed down by the courts. Despite the fact that the number of inmates on death row is climbing, the number of death sentences actually carried out in any given year lags far behind. People simply aren’t fearful of the death penalty when it is not used the way it should be (Stewart 50). If the death penalty has been declared legal, then the...
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...Abolishing Capital Punishment The death penalty, also known as capital punishment, has existed as a type of punishment for a long time. Although this has been around for what feels like forever, the question that has also been present for that same amount of time is whether it is right or wrong. Many states use capital punishment for reasons such as justice for the victim and their family and to prevent the likelihood of the same crime. However capital punishment does not assure these results, therefore the United States should eliminate the death penalty. The death penalty dates back to the Eighteenth Century B.C. Death sentences were done by crucifixion, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and impalement (DPIC). The Death Penalty Information Center states that “Britain influenced America's use of the death penalty more than any other country. When European settlers came to the new world, they brought the practice of capital punishment. The first recorded execution in the new colonies was that of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608. Kendall was executed for being a spy for Spain.” In the 1930’s death penalty statistics began to be collected on a regular basis. By the end of the 1960’s, all but ten states had laws allowing capital punishment. Due to strong pressure by people against the death penalty there was a suspension on executions that began in 1972 and ended in 1976. Before the suspension there was an average of 130 executions...
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...otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States” (Staff 2010). This means that any trial a person may have a trial by their peers if they choose too. The jurors make the decision in whether or not the criminal will go to jail. Even though jurors have the right to decide if the criminal will go to jail should they have the right for the criminal to be given the death penalty, this is called being a death-qualified jury. A death qualified jury “refers to a jury dealing with criminal cases where death penalty is the most prospective sentence” (). There are two types of jurors that come and go within this situation. The first is a juror who is “not categorically opposed to the imposition of capital punishment” (). The second type of juror is one who “does not believe that the death penalty must be imposed in all instances of capital murder. A major difference with these two jurors is capital punishment and capital murder. Capital punishment is when a person is legally authorized to say that someone should be killed for the crime they committed. Then there is capital murder which “means murder for which death penalty may be imposed” (). Some people believe in capital punishment because some crimes are heinous that the criminal deserves to die. Others believe that since they are saying the criminal should die then they are killing the criminal. When selecting jurors for different cases they use the voire dire method. Voire dire is French and it means...
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...2009), compares the deterrence capability of the death penalty to that of long term imprisonment. The article begins by detailing the context of the study through highlighting the declining support for the deterrence hypothesis, due in large part to flawed empirical research. Radelet and Lacock offer a brief history of studies on...
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...the aspect of how the laws have changed. In the 1800s there were not enough law enforcement officers to enforce the laws. Therefore, many people believed it necessary to take the law into his or her own hands. An example of vigilante justice in the 1800s was the lynching of Henry Smith. This is a sad example of how people were treated; in 1893 Henry Smith was tortured and burned alive in front of a crowd of 10,000 people. People were executed for crimes not committed and trials were not an option (Keene, 2012). In the 18th century B.C.E. the first know death penalty was in the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon. A person could have 25 crimes before the sanction of the state for the death penalty. Capital punishment in the 18th century consisted of stoning, hanging, crucifixion, burned alive, lethal injection, drowning, and fire squads (Capital Punishment, 2012). Today the criminal justice system concerning the death penalty and capital punishment has come along way. Although people as far back as the 1600s took the law in their own hands, today it is considered immoral and unjust. Citizens who commit a crime today are...
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...be sentenced to this, all other states have a eighteen limit (Pros and Cons Part Two). It should be legal to have the death penalty for juveniles, because dangerous criminal juveniles deserve the same punishment as adults. Juveniles are equal to a grow adult when they break these severe laws. Dangerous criminal minors deserve the same punishment as anyone else. Countries that support these executions include the United States, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen(History of the Death Penalty, Linn). Ninety Seven children have been executed since the year 1900 (HIstory of the Death Penalty, Linn). These children are dangerous people and we cannot trust them again in a public setting. The counties that allow this penalty see them as criminals , there is no age limit for committing crimes. Another reason for juvenile death penalty would include how they would live the rest of their lives out....
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...the death penalty. Death penalty is whereby a state through its judiciary system gives a court punishment for an offence as death. That person would be legally killed within a set period of time. This is an ethical question in that some people feel that death penalty is wrong, while others feel that it is justifiable in some cases. This is a great debate in most countries and the debate includes a lot of civic and religious groups. In some cases the discretion to give a death penalty is vested in a few people in the judiciary system. Looking at the issue of death penalty, there are varied reasons that support the penalty as well as some reasons that seem to suggest that death penalty is bad. In many countries the constitution tells whether or not the death penalty should be upheld in the country. Overberg (n.d) says that about 75% of the people in the United States indicated that they favour death penalty. The same author says that the Catholic Bishops and Jews are against the penalty. The contrasting thing is that in 1966, according to this same author only half the population in USA approved of the death penalty. This shift in number of people favouring the death penalty is suggested to come due to the increased number of murders and violent crimes. So some people believe that the death penalty would deter would be violent offenders to shun violence as the would fear the death penalty. It is reported that the USA government has a shift towards wanting the death penalty. The...
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