The people in support of the death penalty say that if murderers are sentenced to death, future committers will think about the consequences before they actually proceed with the crime. However, most murderers don’t expect or plan to be caught and weigh their fate. Because, murders are committed when the murderer is angry or passionate, or by drug abusers and people under the influence of drugs or alcohol ("Deterrence (In Opposition to the Death Penalty)”). Therefore, it will not deter future crimes and will actually increase the amount of murders because of society. As previously stated, the death penalty isn’t proven to prevent future murders and/or crimes because it actually increases the likelihood of committing murder. It doesn’t prevent future murders because it would upset the family and friends of the person who was executed. For example, if someone was executed by the death penalty and it was someones family member, then the person who lost their loved one by the execution would most likely commit murder in anger. If that person was executed the next family member would get angry and so on. The cycle would never end and would have more murders. There is no final proof that the death penalty is a better deterrent than other options. Not having the death penalty would be better because it could save many lives. For example, United States a country that uses the death penalty has a higher murder rate than Europe or Canada which are countries that do not use the death penalty. To get a little specific, the states in the United States that do not use the death penalty have a lower murder rate than the states that do. The supporters of the death penalty say that when someone murders another, the balance of justice is disarrang... ... middle of paper ... ...d the crime in some states. This is because some states in the United States do not have the death penalty but have the life sentence. This can also be for different countries. For instance, if someone in one country or state gets sentenced to the death penalty, but then someone who committed about the same crime in another country or state gets a life sentence. One man in one country or state has to die while the other in the other country or state gets to live. Finally, the death penalty is unreliable and not properly used because most trials have some serious errors. A statistic by Columbia University Law School says that two thirds of all capital trials had some major errors. It also stated that after the cases retired, over 80% of the defendants were not given the death sentence and only 7% were completely free (“Innocence (In Opposition to the Death Penalty)”).
A death penalty is the sentence of execution for murder and some other capital crimes. Capital punishment can also be applied for treason, espionage, and other crimes. The death penalty, or capital punishment, may be prescribed by Congress or any state legislature for murder and other capital crimes. The Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty is not a per se violation of the Eighth Amendment 's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Since 1973 there have been a total number of one-hundred and fifty-one death row executions. (10 Reasons…, 1). Out of all of these executions only eighteen of them have ever had any further evidence to show that the guilty party was innocent. Many people argue that this is enough to make it to where the death penalty should not be used. However, that leaves one-hundred and thirty-three death row executions that have not been proven to have been the wrong person. If each individual that is sentenced to be executed has killed only one person than that is one-hundred and thirty-three people that have been killed. The fact remains that if there were no death penalty executions then there would be one-hundred and fifty-one people that have not been justified by their death. Although having eighteen innocent people put to death because they were wrongfully accused is a terrible thing, it does not even begin to oppose the one-hundred and fifty-one people that were killed because of the hate and fear that causes a person to bring this harm upon other people. Also many of these people have affected more than just one person. They may have killed or harmed multiple people. The people who oppose this are simply stating that the murderers’ lives are worth more than the people that they killed.
The capital punishment has been cited as a reasonable sentence by those who advocate for retribution. This is essentially when it comes to justice so that people take full responsibility for their individual actions. Studies have proved that the decision to take away life of a person because they committed a certain crime serves to perpetuate the crime in question. It also serves to enhance the progress of organized and violent crime. It has been noted that various flaws in the justice system has led to the wrong conviction of innocent people. On the other hand, the guilty have also been set free, and a plethora of several cases has come up when a critical look at the capital punishment has been undertaken. Killers hardly kill their victims deliberately, but they probably act on anger, passion, or impulsively. In this regard, it is not proper to convict them exclusively without
Main Point 1: Imagine someone that has been accused of murder and sentenced to death row has to spend almost 17-20 years in jail and then one day get kill. Then later on the person that they killed was not the right person.
Offenders given mandatory life in prison on charges of murder, on average only serve 16 years before being released back into society. One in three of these killers carries out a second murder even under the supervision of the probation officer.1 If we allow murderers to spend life in prison we run the chance of them getting out and killing again. Capital punishment can also deter future perpetrators from committing such a heinous crime, and it will end the prisoner’s suffering by giving them a humane death and give closure to the victim’s family. Without a concrete meaning of “life in prison” we need the death penalty to put an end to the most evil of people.
It has been demonstrated the one in seven people, or fourteen percent, who are put on death row were innocent of their convicted crimes. The American society is outraged when an innocent person is killed, the fourteen percent would not have to suffer if the death penalty was illegal throughout the country. There is no way to tell how the more one thousand people, possibly more, executed since 1976 may also have been innocent, courts do not generally entertain claims of innocence when the defendant is dead. Wrongful convictions and executions can be made from many of the following factors: mistaken eyewitness testimony, faulty forensic science, fabricated testimony or testimony from jailhouse informants, grossly incompetent lawyers, false confessions, police or prosecutorial misconduct and racial bias. Many of the people who are resentenced from death to life imprisonment may be innocent and rotting behind bars, since without the imminent threat of death, no one will take up their case to exonerate them. Along with the con of the death of innocent people, the elimination of the death penalty proves as a more effective way to deter
How would you feel if you were claimed guilty for a crime you did not do? This is a situation that many people undergo in their respective judicial system. The death penalty is a legal procedure where a person is killed by the government as a punishment for a serious crime they committed. Currently, there are 32 states that practice death penalty and 18 states that have abolished it. In 1846, Michigan became the first US state to eradicate the death penalty for all crimes except for treason. In 1852, Rhode Island became the first US state to abolish the death penalty for all crimes including treason. Even though the death row may contain many malicious murderers, there is a large probability that there are innocent victims among them. Many nations see the death penalty as a violation of human rights and believe that it should be eradicated. The number of executions is decreasing and the public is beginning to fight against this criminal justice process. Although the death penalty has resulted in the death of many criminals, capital punishment must be eradicated because many innocent people are murdered, it is used in a racist manner, and many millions of dollars are spent on this practice.
Between 1977 and 2010, an estimated 8,000 people were on Death Row in the US and out of those 8,000, more than 1,200 were actually executed (Siennick, 2012). Policy makers and scholars have been especially interested in whether the death penalty serves a crime-control function by deterring prospective murderers (Siennick, 2012). This debate on whether or not the Death Penalty is an effective deterrent is important to our society because we need to understand the impact of this ultimate and final punishment. Expectations of deterrence follow from the basic idea that potential murderers decide whether to kill after considering the benefits and costs of killing (Siennick, 2012). The Death Penalty as punishment can be a deciding factor to a potential murderer when they make the decision whether to kill someone or not. There is assorted evidence on whether or not this happens and there isn’t a chosen method to gather data that fully supports this idea.
The death penalty isn’t effective in reducing crime; it just continues to grow. Thirteen states do not have the death penalty: Alaska, District of Colombia, Hawaii, Iowa, Main, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. "DEATH PENALTY ARGUMENTS." DEATH PENALTY ARGUMENTS. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2016. There may be crimes going on over there, we can’t stop the crimes, but we can help reduce it and make the world a peaceful place. Prisoners may be given parole depending on what conditions to place on their release. Parole gives a criminal an option to repent and to have a good behavior. Sometimes parole goes too far. Some criminals tend to take advantage of this opportunity and end up back into prison. Instead of the death penalty, there is life imprisonment; to stay in jail all your life and repent for the bad deeds. This way the criminal may be ashamed of his or her actions. By killing them, they won’t learn anything from this. However, in most cases many people favor the death penalty because they want reparation for the wrongdoing in the victim’s family. In Edward Koch’s, it states “If we create a society in which injustice is not tolerated, incidents of murder- the most flagrant form of injustice- will diminish” (484). Murder is a major issue, but it can be solved from many others options. The
According to Death Penalty Facts and Statistics, in 2012, 63% of people were in favor of the death penalty, 32% were not in favor, and 6% do not have a preference. I find this statistic to be very surprising because I did not know that many people still believed in giving out the death penalty sentence. On estimate, 16,000 murders take place each year in the United States, 13,000 arrests, 8,000 convictions and fewer than 120 get death sentences (Guernsey). A positive about death penalty is that it will for sure end the crime recurrence risk since the offender is not alive anymore (Death Penalty Facts). This quite horrible to think of it that way, but it is the truth, if they are given the death penalty then they will never be able to re-offend. As of 2012, thirty-two states in the United States still use the death penalty (Death Penalty Facts). If an inmate believes that they are innocent then they are legally allowed to appeal the courts decision allowing a higher court to review the case. Not all cases get overturned, but some do which helps from executing innocent people.
On the other side of the debate, there are those that believe that the death penalty is a deterrent. For most criminals, they are aware of the fact that if they get caught, they will be sent to prison. However, other than being sent to prison, there are not really any other repercussions for committing a crime. They argue that if a person were to be presented with the possibility of the death penalty, they would more than likely think twice about their actions and realize that there are more risks than just im...
On May 23, 1981 in the state of Jacksonville, Florida, Leo Jones was convicted of the murder of a police officer, Thomas Szafranski. The officer was struck in the head by a sniper bullet while sitting in his police car in downtown Jacksonville. Leo Jones was later arrested that same day in a nearby apartment where two Winchester rifles were found and was sentenced to death by electrocution. Only one of the rifles found contained Jones’ fingerprints. Jones did confess to the killing saying he killed the officer because of police beatings, but however he later said that the confession was a lie and that the police forced him to confess and a gun was held to his head. After the arrest Jones was taken to a medical hospital and was treated for minor injuries such as cuts and bruises on his face. A retired police officer of the name Cleveland Smith, came forward and announced that the officer Lynwood Mundy, the same officer who supposedly beat Jones had bragged to Smith that he beat Jones after the arrest. Smith had also said that he had witnessed Mundy receive an confession from a suspect by squeezing his genitals in a firm grip. This evidence can almost prove that Mundy in fact did beat Jones but it was never proved. Jones was not the only one to say that another man had killed the officer, about a dozen other people had also indicated that it was a different man and other witnesses have said they heard the criminal brag that he has shot the officer. The case had sent Jones to death row for sixteen years. Suspicion began to rise as the main witnesses against Jones had recanted, two of the key police officers had left the police department randomly, a...
During the spring semester I read Evangelium Vitae: The Gospel of Life. Paragraphs 27 and 56 of this encyclical prompted a discussion of the death penalty with other students. Their first reaction was that the Pope was against it and that he was saying that the penalty has no justification. There was general resistance to the suggestion that while the Pope's attitude toward the death penalty is, to put it mildly, unfavorable, he did not flat out say that it was immoral, wrong, without justification.
In two thousand and ten a poll found that “64% of Americans support the death penalty for someone convicted of a murder” (Lethal injection). Yet, a two thousand and sixteen poll found “that 49% of people favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder” (Green garage blog). This happens to be the lowest level of support is many years. It is stated by Pew Research that majority of the decrease has come from democrats at 34% whereas republicans are at 72% (). The more controversial side of the death penalty has more to do with personal feelings rather than facts. An argument that is made is that someone may be wrongly convicted of a crime twenty three of every one hundred people are wrongly convicted and executed as stated by Death Penalty. As many as four percent of those on death row have been overturned for being innocent after conviction. In addition, some believe that putting prisoners who have committed serious crimes on death row might give the victims and their families’ closure. Yet, it seems as though it only enforces the pain by having to wait for the execution while going through the long death row process. The time and money used during this long and dreadful process could be used to rehabilitation and or counseling for the victim’s family or the prisoner. Some think that death penalty will detour people from committing such harsh crimes, yet it has been proven that it has actually done the opposite. Those countries in which do not have the death penalty have a significantly lower crime rate than those who do. Another way in which this is controversial is because of discrimination in the justice system. “This means the system tends to execute more when a white person is killed and less when a black person is killed” (Death Row). Minority defendants are more likely to be sentenced to death than white defendants who commit the same crime. The death penalty cost much more
What is the definition of death sentence? In simple form, death sentence means a legal process whereby a person who found guilty was taken his life by the state as a punishment for a heavy crime. In the past, capital punishment has been practiced by most societies to punish people who had done serious crime. However, as we enter the 21st century, abolishing death penalty has been the most contestable issue in today’s society. This argumentative issue has been discussed not only in the parliament of the countries, but also in the cafés or restaurants among the citizens. Many of the countries had stopped using the death penalty due to some reasons nowadays. Although there are some people still prefer to execute death penalty for the purpose of declining the crime rates, the supports for implementing capital penalty are slowly and gradually decreasing. According to the research, there are 315 death sentences were executed in 1995 in United States. However, there are just 128 in 2005 and 102 in 2006 ("Abolish the Death Penalty", 2007). Therefore, it is proven that entirely abolishment of death penalty can expected by the society in the future. Capital punishment is the most neglected form of government hypocrisy. This can be seen when government murders people who murder people to show society that murder is wrong and inexcusable. It is really a contradiction in policy in trying their best to reduce or even expect to totally eliminate the crime in their own countries. Thus, our opinion is the capital punishment should be banned by government due to some significant reasons which are the right to life, fairness and cost effectiveness.