Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment There once was a man, long ago, that was sentenced to death for crimes the government said he had committed. He was not a murderer or a thief. He wasn’t a rebel he was just a normal man doing what was right. Since the government saw him as a threat to them they sent him to death. An innocent man was killed.

The Ineffectiveness of Capital Punishment For many years, capital punishment has been in use, but it is not been effective. Theodore Robert Bundy in 1978, slipped into a Tallahassee sorority house and bludgeoned two sleeping women to death, then killed a 12-year-old girl in Lake City. He was sentenced to three concurrent death sentences in 1979. Nine years later, Bundy is alive and well on the Death Row (Von Drehle 1A). A prisoner sentenced to death spends an average of 10 years, nationally, on death row waiting for their execution.

According to the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, Capital Punishment is the infliction by due legal process of the penalty of death as a punishment for crime. Capital Punishment, also known as, the Death Penalty has been around for centuries. The first established death penalty laws date as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes (www.deathpenaltyinfo.org). Not only is Capital Punishment ancient, it is highly controversial as well. For many years, it has been a huge debate regarding Capital Punishment and its morale.

Capital punishment is an unnecessary practice in America that should be abolished. There are many reasons that prove this to be true. It is more expensive to execute a person than to keep them in prison for life. The deaths of innocent people can never be taken back. There is no solid evidence that the death penalty deters crime. Capital punishment is unfair. “That law is a stain on our conscience” (Cuomo 1).

Capital Punishment in America What is capital punishment? The dictionary defines capital punishment as a noun that means putting a person to death. At the end of 2003 there were 3374 inmates at 37 state and federal prisons who were on death row. That number was an 188 decrease from the statistics in 2002.

In 1997, 80% of Americans favored the death penalty. A recent national poll found that, that number has significantly dropped to an all time low of 63%percent. In addition, those favoring the death penalty dropped to fifty percent when those polled were asked to assume that the alternative to the death penalty was life in prison with no chance of parole. And, the amount of death sentences imposed in the United States during the recent years has dropped to the lowest level since capital punishment was reinstated. Hence, it would seem that our society’s attitude toward capital punishment is changing as well. What was once ordinary is now abnormal, and what was once essentially unquestioned is now questioned.The debate over the legitimacy or morality of the death penalty may be almost as old as the death penalty itself and, in the view of the increasing trend towards its complete abolition, perhaps as outdated. Capital punishment is horribly flawed, ineffective at deterring crime, completely unethical, outrageously expensive, and has no place in a civilized society.

Capital Punishment The introduction into this book is well written and promises to take you on an intellectual and levelheaded historical account of Capital Punishment throughout American history. It delves into the possible reasons that our society is both fearful and fascinated with the subject of the death penalty and as the overview states “the reader can decide for himself or herself whether the death penalty should have a continuing place in America’s criminal justice system. ” The book begins with a dilemma based on a case where a man committed murder in two states, one that has the death penalty (Oklahoma) and one that does not (New York). He is convicted in both states, but which one should get to carry out the sentence, the one that prosecuted him first, New York.

More than 4,300 people have been executed in the United States since 1930. There is no way of knowing how many people have been executed in the United States because executions were once a public affair with no central agency keeping track of them. In addition to these judicialy imposed actions, there were 4,730 recorded lynchings by vigilantes in the U.S. with most being publicly displayed. Some people, such as Pope Johm Paul II believe that these punishments are cruel and outright evil. While on the other hand, many feel that these actions taken are well deserved, like Missouri’s Gov. Mel Carnahan who has allowed 22 men to be executed during his 7 years in office. I believe that Capital Punishment is a neccesity in our society being that the crime fits the punishment, such as murder and rape.

On July 2, 1976, almost two hundred years since the United States of America passed the Declaration of Independence, the Supreme Court legalized capital punishment (Appendix 1). Capital punishment executed for the crime of theft. Since then there have been an estimated 18,000 to 20,000 people lawfully executed(Espy pp.194). In the eighteenth century, England would punish by death for crimes such as pick pocketing and petty theft. After the 1650's colonist could be put to death for denying the true god or cursing their parents advocates.

Capital Punishment and Deterrence Abstract Capitol Punishment has been around since the beginning of mankind; eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. Since then the public have debated for or against capital punishment revolving around issues of deterrence, retribution, discrimination and Irreversibility. Leaving us with the responsibility to analyze the factors surrounding capital punishment.