ProDeath Penalty On April 9, 2001, police in Leitchfield, Kentucky were called to Bratcher's Flea Market to report the discovery of the body of an infant. A septic tank worker had been pumping out the women's outhouse when his vacuum hose became stuck. When the man pulled the hose out of the toilet, the body of a male human infant was attached to the hose by the buttocks. An autopsy showed that the baby was a newborn at the time of death, and there were no apparent abnormalities that should have caused the baby's death by natural causes. Police discovered that Kathie, a regular vendor at the flea market, had been seen with blood on her clothing at the previous flea market session. She also appeared to be extremely weak, weak enough that she had to have help breaking down her table and loading her merchandise back into her vehicle at the end of the day. When questioned, Harless denied being the mother of the child. However, subsequent DNA testing on blood samples from Harless and the baby proved with a 99.99% certainty that she was the mother. Within two hours of having her blood drawn for testing, Kathie and her husband Doug Harless fled from their home in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky (STORY COURTESY OF AMERICAS MOST WANTED) I hope this story disturbed you as much as it did me. Today, Im going to be taking about the death penalty and why we should make more use of it. Capital punishment has been a cause for debate for many years, and people continue to disagree on the topic. There are many reasons why the death penalty should be used, but the three most important are that it deters potential murderers from committing crimes, it saves our government money in the long run, and most importantly, it guarantees that these convicted murderers will not kill again. Why does the United States need capital punishment? The main purpose of the death penalty is to protect the rights of victims ! John McAdams, a professor of Political Science at Marquette University sums it up best: "If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and in so doing would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former.
Another case is that of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson whose death was initially ruled the result of accidental suffocation. A second autopsy produced a different conclusion, but when the second autopsy was performed, his body had been stuffed with newspaper, and his organs were missing ("Organ Trafficking, Melanin Theory & the Fountain of Youth -," n.d.). The brain, heart, lungs and liver were missing. He also discovered Johnson's death was due to blunt force trauma to the right side of his neck (Archer,
Kemp, Joe. “Fetus of pregnant, brain-dead Texas woman ‘distinctly abnormal’: lawyers.” NYDailyNews. New York Daily News. 23 Jan. 2014. Web. 08 Feb. 2014.
In the book “Death's Acre”, By Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson they tell readers how they got to where they are today in their careers and how Dr. Bill Bass became famous for the well known “Body Farm” at the University of Tennessee. In “Deaths Acre” Bass invites people across the world who are reading to go behind the gates of the body farm where he revolutionized forensic anthropology. Bass takes us on a journey on how he went from not knowing if this is what he wanted to do for a living to being in a career that he would never trade. He tells us about the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder, explored the headless corpse of a person whose identity shocked many people included the police, divulges how the telltale traces and case
Two detectives were assigned to the case: Harry Hanson and Finis Brown. [2] When they and the police arrived at the crime scene, it was already swarming with people, gawkers and reporters. The entire situation was out of hand and crowded, everyone trampling all over any hopes for good evidence. [2] One thing they did report finding was a nearby cement block with watery blood on it, tire tracks and a heel print on the ground. There was dew under the body so they knew it had been set there just after 2 a.m. when temperatures dropped to 38 degrees.
In the town, of West Memphis, Arkansas, three eight year old boys (Chris Byers, Michael Moore, and Stevie Branch) went missing May fourth, the following day they were found bruised, mutilated, hogtied, and stripped of their clothes with signs of rape present due to the dilation of the anus. The body of Byers was found submerged in the creek about 60 yards south of Interstate 55(Crime scene or dump site?). The other two bodies was located exactly five feet in both directions of Byers body. (It was determined that Moore and Branch both died from multiple traumatic injuries to the head, torso, and extremities with drowning; while, Byers died of the multiple traumatic i...
In 1969, researchers agreed to define SIDS as “the sudden death of an infant or young child, which is unexpected by history, and in which a thorough postmortem examination fails to demonstrate an adequate cause of death” (Bergman, 1970).
On Thanksgiving evening, November 27, 1992, Sergeant Kenneth Mathison and his wife Yvonne drive their 1988 tan Ford van along Route 131 in Hilo, Hawaii. The rain is pouring down and before he knows it, Kenneth Mathison is awaiting police assistance as he cradles his wife’s dead body in the back of their van. Mathison, a sergeant of 25 years with the Hilo Police Department was allegedly informing his wife, a maternity nursing professional at the Hilo Medical Center, that he was being investigated in his second paternity suit. According to Mathison, when Yvonne heard the news, she jumped from the passenger side of the van. While he was looking for her in the blinding rain, Mathison purportedly ran over his wife. He then carried the body into the van and secured it with yellow rope in the back before attempting to find help. Will the forensic evidence support Mathison’s account of that fateful evening?
Proponents of capital punishment believe that killing criminals is a moral and ethical way of punishing them. They feel there is justification in taking the life of a certain criminal, when in fact that justification is nothing more than revenge. They also feel that the death penalty deters crime, although there have been no conclusive studies confirming that viewpoint (Bedau).
The United States should use the death penalty because it is economical and continues to be a deterrent for potential offenders. Take into consideration that the Constitution states that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness can not be taken away without due process. The offenders committing the brutal, heinous crimes have not applied this right to the victims of their crimes. Why should the government take their rights into consideration when the victims rights mean so little to them? People always put forth the idea that killing is wrong in any sense, yet they don’t want to punish the people that commit the crimes.
Sue Grafton once stated: “Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right.” This is clearly the thought the Boulder Colorado police conceived in the case of little beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. As many have observed from the onslaught of media coverage, the day after Christmas 1996, six year old Jon Benet Ramsey was found buried under a white blanket, bound, beaten, and strangled to death in the wine cellar of their Boulder home. With such a strikingly rare and glamorous story of a six year old beauty queen dead, who was a part of a “perfect American upper-middle class family”, combined with a lack of a lead and ever mounting suspicion piling up against the parents it was no surprise to find that it was fuel to the media and soon stories sold and became a matter of competition between the press. So, like wildfire, this heart-breaking story spread, stretching across the nation, shattering the souls of the world. News broadcasts, magazine and newspaper articles, and television specials all shaped and molded peoples perceptions of this beautiful child’s murder, especially her parents, John and Pasty Ramsey’s involvement or lack there of. The police and FBI’s merciless quest to connect Jon Benet’s murder to her parents, seemed to cause the them to overlook important evidence, or at the very least dismiss suspicious findings that would otherwise send red flags to investigators. There are many contributors as to why this case remains unsolved including lack of investigative expertise, failure to protect valuable evidence, and focusing too much on the parents as suspects but, ultimately, the over involvement of...
I believe that capital punishment is necessary to ensure justice. Certain criminals commit crimes so great that they warrant death. The emotional tolls of the people around the victim can be alleviated by the death of the perpetrator. Prisons are inherently difficult to run, and capital punishment reduces the efforts that must be expended to successfully manage a prison. Capital punishment reduces crime in the way that it offers an incentive great enough to prevent offenses such as mass murder. Capital punishment holds much support in its favor, and I believe that it should remain.
Almost all nations in the world either have the death sentence or have had it at one time. It was used in most cases to punish those who broke the laws or standards that were expected of them. Since the death penalty wastes tax money, is inhumane, and is largely unnecessary it should be abolished in every state across the United States. The use of the death penalty puts the United States in the same category as countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia which are two of the world’s worst human rights violators (Friedman 34). Lauri Friedman quotes, “Executions simply inject more violence into an already hostile American society.”
While we may all want murders off the street, the problem we come to face is that capital punishment is being used for vengeance or as a deterrent. Capital punishment has been used worldwide, not only by the governments to instill fear, but to show that there are repercussions to ones actions. From the time we are born, we are taught to learn the difference between right and wrong. It is ingrained in our brains, what happens to people that do bad things? Capital punishment is renowned for being the worst thing that could be brought amongst ones life.
The death penalty has been an issue of debate for several years. Whether or not we should murder murderer’s and basically commit the same crime that they are being killed for committing. People against the death penalty say that we should not use it for that very reason. They also make claims that innocent people who were wrongly convicted could be killed. Other claims include it not working as a deterrent, it being morally wrong, and that it discriminates.
had told the police. It was a very hard thing for Katie to talk about,