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Controversial issues death penalty
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On July 23rd, 2014, Joseph Wood laid on the executioner’s gurney, as he received a lethal dosage of drugs. As the drugs progressed into his system, he began gasping and struggling for breath. The execution that was supposed to last only 10-15 minutes continued on for 2 agonizing hours. Although 2/3 of the countries in the world have gotten rid of lethal injection, 31 states in the US still practice this form of punishment. Lethal injection and other forms of capital punishment should be abolished in all states because it affects innocent people, the cost of lethal injection cases is more than a life imprisonment, and there is no humane way to conduct the death penalty.
To begin with, lethal injection affects innocent people. Many people think
Many people are led to believe that the death penalty doesn’t occur very often and that very few people are actually killed, but in reality, it’s quite the opposite. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1,359 people have been executed as a result of being on death row since 1977 to 2013. Even though this form of punishment is extremely controversial, due to the fact that someone’s life is at stake, it somehow still stands to this very day as our ultimate form of punishment. Although capital punishment puts murderers to death, it should be abolished because killing someone who murdered another, does not and will not make the situation any better in addition to costing tax payers millions of dollars.
In the minds of the American public and jurors in capital cases the perception of lethal injection is of a clean, clinical, and painless end. As stated in the article, Lethal Injection, seventy-one percent of those responding to a 2001 survey considered injection to be the least cruel form of execution (Lethal Injection). This perception is an advantage to the state because the public is much more willing to accept execution in this form and jurors are more willing to convict and pass the death sentence. At times it is understood why the death penalty would be considered in cases. Maybe the people are a threat to not only society but also to themselves, and need to be put to death so they can do no harm to anyone. Vickers gunned down a grocery store owner who was probably trying to make a living for himself and his family. Now this man is gone; his family is left in agony, and maybe Vickers deserves to die. Some people may say an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but do two wrongs make a right?
The Death Penalty is cruel and unusual, however we still give constitutional acceptance to the federal system. It presents “a relic of the earliest days of penology, when slavery, branding, and other corporal punishments were commonplace. Like those other barbaric practices, executions have no place in civilized society.”(1) It is wrong to advocate the the use of the capital punishment when numerous options are available to those in need of rehabilitation. Three of the most prominent problems with continuing this archaic method of retribution are innocents conflicted with inaccurate verdicts, the death penalty being a state-sanctioned killing that only continues the evolution of violence, and the nation's taxes going towards the purchase of fatal narcotics used in the killings of fellow human beings.
Over the years the ways executions are performed have changed significantly to be less gruesome, Though even with these changes capital punishment still remains as inhumane and unconstitutional as it was before and effecting the lives of several people. The eighth amendment holds a strong cases against capital punishment. According to the University of Minnesota Human Rights Library the eighth amendment states “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted”. When our country allows these executions to continue it is allowing our rights to be trampled, no one deserves to be treated inhumanely. Beyond our constitutional rights being trampled, there has also been an extreme shortage in the three step drugs used in executions due to Pharmaceutical companies not wanting to be part of killing when there sole purpose is to provide to help people survive. That leaves one with the question, if there is a shortage in these drugs how are facilities still administering lethal injections? The answer is simple. “States are now buying drugs from illegal sources, ordering new ones from compounding ph...
One of the most controversial issues in our country is whether or not the death penalty should be abolished. The death penalty is an abomination to humanity. Through the abolition of the death penalty people are saved from a morally unjust death. No matter who they are, no one has the right to take another human beings life away from them. The death penalty has been around since the dawn of time and needs to be abolished. Thus, as the number of people on death row continues to rise, The United States Federal Government must abolish the death penalty due to ethics, religion, and unconstitutionality.
From the time the first colonists arrived in the late Sixteen Hundreds Pennsylvania executions were carried out by public hanging (Cor.state.pa.us, 2014). In Eighteen Forty Three, Pennsylvania became the first state to abolish public hangings. From Eighteen Thirty Four until Nineteen Fifty Three each county was responsible for carrying out private hanging of criminal within the wall of the county jail.
There are currently 32 states, including California, in America that actively use the death penalty. Since 1976, there have been 1378 executions, carried out in a number of different ways. The government has used gas chambers, firing squads, hangings, electrocution chairs, and lethal injections with the goal of providing an instantaneous and painless death. Lethal injection is the most common of these methods, using a fatal cocktail of drugs to immediately stop the victim’s breathing and heartbeat. This technique, however, will now undergo immense scrutiny and may even be outlawed in the wake of the Oklahoma incident.
Opponents of the death penalty will site several reasons to abolish death penalty such as the usage of death penalty as a deterrent, the cost of death penalty vs life in prison, unfairness in the application of death sentencing, and possible mistakes. Opponents would much rather focus on the rights’ of criminals than the victims and their families.
One hundred and ninety-eight countries have abolished the cruel punishment of death penalty in law by 2012 (Valeontis, 2012, para. 5). The capital punishment is cruel and cannot be said as a viable form of punishment for crime control. Taking away someone’s life cannot be justified in any way as a form of punishment. Death penalty is cruel and should be abolished because it violates right to life, it is cruel to humankind or gives birth to brutalization and it cannot be reversed.
Each year there are about 250 people added to death row and 35 executed. From 1976 to 1995 there were a total of 314 people put to death in the US 179 of them were put to death using lethal injection, 123 were put to death using electrocution, 9 were put to death in a gas chamber, 2 were hanged, and 1 was put to death using the firing squad. The death penalty is the harshest form of punishment enforced in the United Sates today. Once a jury has convicted a criminal, they go to the second part of the trial, the punishment phase. If the jury recommends the death penalty and the judge agrees then the criminal will face some form of execution, lethal injection is the most common form used today. There was a period from 1972 to 1976 that capital punishment was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Their reason for this decision was that the death penalty was "cruel and unusual punishment" under the Eighth Amendment. The decision was reversed when new methods of execution were introduced. Capital punishment is a difficult issue and there are as many different opinions as there are people. In our project, both sides have been presented and argued fully.
The death penalty is one of the most controversial topics debated today. Like every controversial topic, there are two sides to it. Each side has valid arguments for what they believe, however, I believe that one side is more right than the other. Some of the arguments that come into play when discussing the death penalty are the following: the cost of having someone on death row, a person has the right to live, whether or not it discourages crime, and possible innocence of the defendant.
The death penalty has been used in the United States since the beginning. America was greatly influenced by Great Britain. They used the death penalty there and when the British colonized America, they continued the practice here.
Continue on with the argument of the cost of death penalty, many states have abolished the death penalty sentence because of cost issues. In fact, since 2014, only Texas, Missouri, Florida, Oklahoma and Georgia had carried the executions law (Von Drehle). Not to mention, many states use lethal injection and gas chamber for execution, but the costs for them are not low. The medical procedure for using such drugs is complicat...
In the United States, lethal injection began in 1982 and is legal in thirty seven of the thirty eight states that have the death penalty (Litton 2004). The first state to legalize and use the death penalty was in Texas (Romanelli 2011). Some people believe the death penalty is a violation of the eighth amendment which states “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel or unusual punishments inflicted.” (U.S. Constitution. Amend VIII). From the time period of 2001-2006, 189 of the 191 executions that happened were by lethal injection (Litton 2004). The reason lethal injection was chosen by some states is because it is cheaper and more humane. The person who is being executed is allowed to have family or friends watch their death. Visitors are never turned away without the warden’s say (California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation 2013). The process of lethal injection is fairly short (Litton 2004). When a person is killed by the electric chair they can feel the pain until they die, but when the lethal injection process is used they cannot feel it, therefore, it is more humane. Although there are downfalls, lethal injection is the most ethical and humane for of capital punishment.
The death penalty is a highly controversial and hotly debated topic. The death penalty is completely obsolete in western English speaking countries; the only exception the United States of America. Capital Punishment is only used in cases of treason and in murder 1. Supporters of the death penalty believe that putting a killer to death gives the family of the murdered knowledge that justice was served. The opposition to the death penalty believes that the punishment is too “final”: it offers no possibility of rehabilitation. Both sides, however, recognize the need for a change in the justice system regarding capital punishment. The common issue is finding a punishment which is harsh enough to deter crime but still offers the chance of rehabilitation. The standard form of execution is use of lethal injection, in which the convicted is bound to a chair and injected with sodium thiopental to cause unconsciousness, pancuronium bromide to induce paralysis, and potassium chloride to stop the heart. Texas is the state most liberal in their use of the death penalty, with 34% of the national total since 1976. The death penalty has been a part of civilization for all of man’s existence, starting in Ancient Greece and Egypt and continuing on through today.