Death Penalty Bias

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Is the Death Penalty Biased? There is nothing more final than death, and being so we should be cautious that our desire for justice does not lead us to commit the very crime we wish to punish - murder. In the last decade technology and DNA testing has proven that many convicted of murder were in fact not guilty of the crime. Some were alive and released after decades in jail others unfortunately died in jail. Can we in fact be 100% sure they were guilty? Was the crime justifiable or what were the circumstance leading to the crime? Was the person in their right mind, and are they ever when they murder? Is it an act that that person would repeat? All states should have the death penalty so that they have the option, they don’t necessarily have …show more content…

When European settlers came to the new world, they brought their practice of capital punishment with them. The first recorded execution in the new colonies was 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 passed a law called the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws, which provided the death penalty for minor offenses such as stealing grapes, killing chickens, and trading with Indians. Death penalty laws varied from colony to colony. The New York Colony instituted the Duke's Laws of 1665, which stated that offenses such as striking one's own mother or father, or denying the "true God," were punishable by death. (Randa, …show more content…

Cesare Beccaria's 1767 essay, On Crimes and Punishment, had the biggest impact on the subject. Beccaria theorized that there was absolutely no justification for the state's taking of a man or women’s life. This essay gave abolitionists an authoritative voice and renewed energy, one result of which was the abolition of the death penalty in Austria and Tuscany. (Schabas 1997) American readers and writers were influenced the most by Beccaria’s work. The first attempted revisions of the death penalty in the U.S. occurred when President Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill to revise Virginia's death penalty laws. This bill proposed that capital punishment be used only for the crimes of murder and treason, and was defeated by only a single vote. But Dr. Benjamin Rush, whose signature appears on the Declaration of Independence and is the founder of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, challenged that the death penalty system served as a deterrent. Rush, and many others, believed that the death penalty only encouraged and increased criminal behavior. (DPIC 2015) In the early part of the 19th century, many states reduced the number of their capital crimes and built state penitentiaries to contain the criminals not sentenced to death. Pennsylvania became the first state to move executions away from the public eye and carrying them out in

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