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Capital Punishment

             Should Capital Punishment Be Abolished.
             In 2002, seventy-one people were executed in the thirteen different states. Some advocates for the death penalty say that this number is too low. They feel more people should be put to death because it will deter people from committing acts of murder. People that are against the death penalty say that this number is far too high and in fact the death penalty should be abolished all together. Although they have many claims, their biggest claim seems to be that the death penalty violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. .
             Supporters of the death penalty feel "safer" knowing that harm will not come to them by another human being because the perpetrator is scared of harm his/herself. Mr. Breedlove of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty says "I would know I was safe if anyone that tried to fatally harm me would be put to death. But in this society when someone can kill someone, get sentenced to life, get paroled and then freed to go about and do the same crime again frankly scares me." The problem with this thinking is that someone that is committing a serious crime is not thinking about getting caught. Therefore, they are not thinking about the most severe punishment handed down if they were to be found guilty.
             The people that are against the death penalty feel that the death penalty violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. This means that the death penalty is applied "randomly" and "discriminatorily." They claim that it is overused upon those people whose victims were white and minorities are unfairly targeted by a racist juror or jury. The problem with this claim is that there is evidence that shows minorities are not being singled out. Of the seventy-one executions in 2002, fifty-three of them were white.
             Both sides seem to have good valid points but with every claim there seems to be a contradicting fact or valid reason why the claim is wrong by the opposite side.


Essays Related to Capital Punishment

1. Capital Punishment and the Risk of Executing the Inocent

... few common arguments that I will briefly address their inadequacy. A commonly presented argument is that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. Gerald H. Gottlieb states that capital punishment has been found to violate the Eighth Amendment by ways of "gas chamber, gun, rope or electrical chair" (197). Today lethal ... Electrocution, gas chamber, hanging, and firing squad are still currently legal, but only used if requested by the prisoner. Another objection to capital punishment is that it takes away the life of a person, which is an inviolable value. When the criminal unju...

  • Word Count: 2800
  • Approx Pages: 11
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

2. Capital Punishment and Crime Detterence

... 2013). Statistics show that death penalty sentences are disproportionately imposed on racial minorities and the poor (Dambrun, 2007). Statistics clearly support the complaint that people have made that capital punishment is oppressive to certain races and is not applied on an equal basis for all people. According to Amnesty International, the single most reliable predictor of whether someone will be ... the prison population. Some of them have become institutionalized due to the revolving doors of justice and can't function in society. How can we determine a direct correlation between ca...

  • Word Count: 1818
  • Approx Pages: 7
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

3. Capital Punishment

... viewing of executions was made by Phillip Weise; he asserts that "televised executions ought to be legally mandated to fully educate the public about the political and physical effects of capital punishment". An interesting addition to the issue of public execution occurred in 2001, when Timothy McVeigh requested to have his execution publicly broadcast. Prison officials had been contemplating a closed ... 2). Death Penalty sentencing in the United States is a subject that always evokes strong opinions both for and against the execution of criminals in our correctional system. The issue...

  • Word Count: 2477
  • Approx Pages: 10
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

4. Capital Punishment

... aspects of this question raised by abolitionists, and confirms the fact that it is not unconstitutional nor cruel or unusual. Thus there would be no need to dismiss capital punishment. (Fields of Reading) Dismissing capital punishment on the basis that it does not deter crime, "requires us to eliminate all prisons as well because they do not seem to be anymore effective." In 1985 ... In 1975, a "correlation between execution and deterrence" was discovered. Isaac Ehrlich, an economist from the University of Chicago published a paper in the American Economic Review titled "The Deterrent Ef...

  • Word Count: 1663
  • Approx Pages: 7
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

5. capital punishment as a failed

... government can do so. Jacob Vellenga, in his article, Christianity and the Death Penalty, argued against the propositions of those opposed to the death penalty. Vellenga states that opposition to capital punishment is not for the common good of society but sides with evil because it shows more compassion for the criminal than the victims of the crime and it weakens justice ... longer acceptable according to today's rising levels of decency. Streib also argues that the death penalty is unacceptable and cruel and that is does not fulfill its purpose as a deterrent. Capital punishment is m...

  • Word Count: 1784
  • Approx Pages: 7
  • Grade Level: High School

6. Capital Punishment Pro's

... would seem would logically deter crime, but the problem is that most murderers are unplanned and are not a result of logic. There is other evidence which refutes the effectiveness of capital punishment as a deterrent. During the 1930's the federal government, under the direction of Jack Gibbs, investigated the effectiveness of the death penalty in deterring serious crime. The results of Gibbs ... Though this logic may seem twisted, mandatory appeals expedite the execution process, which is currently an average of 9 years and 6 months on death row before the sentence is carried out.(Capi...

  • Word Count: 4694
  • Approx Pages: 19
  • Grade Level: High School

7. Capital Punishment

... believe these points of views are mostly based on ignorance. Most Americans gladly support the death penalty without even thinking of opposing it. Capital punishment has been used since biblical times, but hasn't proven that it is worth more then its consequences. This is why every industrialized, ... lifer- in jail indefinitely, with enough money left over to go some distance toward hiring an additional jail guard or police officer (Capital Punishment: Facts pg 1-2). Capital punishment is hurting our economy at a time that we need all the help we can get. Budgets are being cut all acro...

  • Word Count: 2619
  • Approx Pages: 10
  • Grade Level: High School

8. Capital punishment in australia

... from committing crimes. Studies of the deterrent effect of the death penalty have been conducted for several years, with varying results. According to the "Australian Coalition against the Death Penalty" capital punishment is less of a deterrent factor for criminals than just simply the risk of getting caught. This they say is only applicable in the rare cases of premeditated murder, whereas murders ... is an absolute certainty. Anti death penalty campaigners always argue that death is not a deterrent. As there are many arguments for the death penalty, there are also arguments against ca...

  • Word Count: 3217
  • Approx Pages: 13
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

9. The Reintroduction of Capital Punishment to Australia

... they have no skills or social contacts to help them become employed, or to start their life over. Then some other people say that capital punishment is much nicer to the criminals than long prison sentences. But death road is much more stressful than any prison sentence or anything similar ... punishments that actually work. While in prisons people need to be rehabilitated as well as punished - this is what prisons should aim to do. If capital punishment came into occurrence it would deter criminals from doing many crimes for a short period of time. But just like a fashion, the reaction ...

  • Word Count: 1884
  • Approx Pages: 8
  • Grade Level: High School

10. Capital Punishment

... penalty expresses the society's desire for vengeance and the belief of a life for a life and it is this very idea that has contributed to the long existence of capital punishment. Every culture has relied on capital punishment and justified it as a necessary tool for exacting retribution or maintaining order. Over the course of time, methods to kill those found guilty were changed. In ancient ... the deceased, and whether there existed a probability that the defendant would commit further violent acts that would threaten society. States such as North Carolina and Louisiana decided to mak...

  • Word Count: 6785
  • Approx Pages: 27
  • Grade Level: High School

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