Cruel And Unusual Punishment Essay

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Capital Punishment: Cruel and Unusual or Deserved and Needed?
Introduction
“I support the death penalty. But I also think that there has to be no margin for error.” This quote is by former Illinois governor George Ryan, I totally agree with the statement because the death penalty can be very useful, but not if an innocent human is being put to death because of it. The death penalty in the United States has long existed, and should not be considered cruel and unusual punishment, in fact, it should be used to punish criminals with crimes deemed punishable by death. The history and background of the death penalty will be provided in this essay to help the reader build their opinion on this issue.
Background of the Issue The death penalty dates …show more content…

I agree that the death penalty does help protect the public from violence and future crime to some extent, but if a murderer wants to kill someone, they are going to do it regardless of risking their own lives to do it, because many are mentally ill, and their mind does not process potential consequences. In a study done by Dartmouth University, an analogy was made between the death penalty as a deterrent for murder like lung cancer is to someone who chooses to smoke cigarettes. The person willingly commits murder knowing that the death penalty is the potential punishment, just like another person lights up a cigarette knowing it could potentially cause lung cancer, (Lamperti, n.d.). Although there are a good amount of murderers who are mentally ill, their brain may not be able to process what capital punishment is, and how it will affect him. I do believe that the mentally ill should be exempt to the death penalty because the focus should be on getting the help that they need and deserve, not kill them for committing a crime that their mind probably told them was okay. I believe that the focus should be more on helping those who are mentally ill, than simply using the death penalty as a form of deterrence. The death penalty does help deter criminals from committing in some ways, but there are probably other ways that could be used and would work more

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