Imagine, your life is perfect, in all its imperfections. You worked hard, through school, married with children, striving along towards goals, a mortgage, that fabulous house, and family reunions. Life is up and down, but your family is what makes all worthwhile. Hard times are family supported, laughter and tears, memories of past inspiring futures yet to come. Now, imagine in the wink of an eye, it is all gone, your wife raped and brutally murdered, your child found slaughtered in the yard, your husband, mother, father or sibling was tortured relentlessly for hours or days before finally dying, your life for all intent purposes is gone. There will never be healing, there will never be closure. All is lost forever. Nothing remains - nothing, except your hope for justice and retribution.
The death penalty for murder is emotionally charged and subject of great debate.
Although survivors of homicide are the ones directly impacted by the crime, the topics of the
death penalty and life without parole come exclusively from a societal, rather than an individual
perspective. As well, most of the attention has focused on the institution of the death penalty and
singularly on the offender instead of the victim. Thus, leaving survivors feeling ignored,
devalued, and rightfully worried that there will not be justice, for them or their loved ones.
Further, Peterson et el state:
Survivor suffering correlates with the impact of the sentence given to the offender. The lest the punishment, the lest the “closure” the more trauma, increasing life long suffering, while the death penalty, though rarely implemented, is touted as bringing “closure,” and relieving some suffering for family members of homicide victims.
Armour, Ma...
... middle of paper ...
...ernational American Commission Human Rights, IACHR, 2007), has yet to be decided by the international commission.
Hogan & Emler, Retributive Justice, in THE JUSTICE MOTIVE IN SOCIAL BEHAVIOR:
ADAPTING TO TIMES OF SCARCITY AND CHANGE 125, 134–35 (Melvin J. Lerner & Sally C. Lerner eds., 1981).
Koch. Edward, I., (b. 1924), long active in Democratic politics, was mayor of New York from
1978 to 1989. This essay first appeared in The New Republic on April 15, 1985. Koch, Edward, I., "Death and Justice: How Capital Punishment Affirms Life." Death and Justice: How Capital Punishment Affirms Life. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
Loge. Peter, The Process of Healing and the Trial as Product: Incompatibility, Courts, and
Murder Victim Family Members, in WOUNDS THAT DO NOT BIND: VICTIM BASED PERSPECTIVES ON THE DEATH PENALTY 411, 412 n.5 (James R. Acker & David R. Karp eds., 2006)
Randa, Laura E. “Society’s Final Solution: A History and Discussion of the Death Penalty.” (1997). Rpt.in History of the Death Penalty. Ed. Michael H. Reggio. University Press of America, Inc., 1997. 1-6 Print.
The promise of closure seems like an illusion more than a reality; the idea of it suffers from the assumption that the murder victims’ families’ desire that the offender be executed in order to feel liberated from grief and all the pain that the criminal has caused. According to Berns, closure is something many families of victims’ pursue, but do not often achieve and it has become a protruding cultural narrative for defining the needs of the victims’ and also the broader concept of justice. Those that are for capital punishment and those who are oppose it don’t really have a true definition for the word and argue whether it exists or not. There are many arguments on how to achieve c...
and tension in our country. The controversy in our society is whether the death penalty/capital punishment serves as a justified form of punishment. Justice can be served by inflicting the death sentence for murder.
“The case Against the Death Penalty.” aclu.org. American Civil Liberties Union, 2012. Web. 12 Feb. 2013
Looking closer, it would seem as if the very ground on which the United States was founded on seems to be shaken by the continuance of the death penalty in over 37 of its 50...
Radelet, M. L. & Borg, M. J. (2000). The changing nature of death penalty debates. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 43-61. Retrieved February 7, 2011 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/223436.pdf
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.
Eaton, Judy, Tony Christensen. “Closure and its myths: Victims’ families, the death penalty, and the closure argument.” International Review of Victimology, Vol 20(3).Sep, 2014. : pp. 327-343.
The key issues involve whether the U.S. should sustain the current death penalty system, abolish it in favor of life in prison without parole plus restitution, or only reform the system to make it less costly and free of class, racial, and mental illness discrepancies. Many people have a stake in the issue. Organizations such as Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union are against the death penalty because they claim it is a cruel and unusual form of punishment, while other groups such as the National Center for Policy Analysis support the death penalty because they believe that life sentences do not deter homicide. Furthermore, victims’ families have a stake in the issue because they deserve justice for their murdered loved ones, and convicted murders have a stake because their own lives are in jeopardy as they sit on death row. Most importantly, all the citizens of the United States are involved in the matter, since the way in which we punish crime affects public safety.
In recent years the role of victims in the criminal justice system has risen into prominence, inspiring much research into victim experience and possible reform. There are a multitude of factors that influence policy makers in relation to reforming the criminal justice system, one of which is victims. However, victims while they can be catalysts for reforms such as the case of James Ramage among others, they still play a relatively minor role in influencing policy change.
Bedau, H. A. (2004). Killing as Punishment:Reflections on the Death Penalty in America. York, Pennsylvania. Maple Press. Northeastern University Press. Print
Victims of crime will deal with a wide range of immediate, short-term and long-term reactions. All victims will experience shock, distress, numbness and disconnection. It can affect their emotional, psychological, physical, social, financial and spiritual wellbeing, causing people to change their behaviour and lifestyles. Victims who have suffered violent crimes and threats to their lives and personal injury will have a different reaction and have a harder time coping with their feelings than those who are victims of nonviolent
Secondly, many believe that capital punishment is right because of the justice given to the victim’s family. These family members feel l...
The death penalty has always been and continues to be a very controversial issue. People on both sides of the issue argue endlessly to gain further support for their movements. While opponents of capital punishment are quick to point out that the United States remains one of the few Western countries that continue to support the death penalty, Americans are also more likely to encounter violent crime than citizens of other countries (Brownlee 31). Justice mandates that criminals receive what they deserve. The punishment must fit the crime. If a burglar deserves imprisonment, then a murderer deserves death (Winters 168). The death penalty is necessary and the only punishment suitable for those convicted of capital offenses. Seventy-five percent of Americans support the death penalty, according to Turner, because it provides a deterrent to some would-be murderers and it also provides for moral and legal justice (83). "Deterrence is a theory: It asks what the effects are of a punishment (does it reduce the crime rate?) and makes testable predictions (punishment reduces the crime rate compared to what it would be without the credible threat of punishment)", (Van Den Haag 29). The deterrent effect of any punishment depends on how quickly the punishment is applied (Workshop 16). Executions are so rare and delayed for so long in comparison th the number of capitol offenses committed that statistical correlations cannot be expected (Winters 104). The number of potential murders that are deterred by the threat of a death penalty may never be known, just as it may never be known how many lives are saved with it. However, it is known that the death penalty does definitely deter those who are executed. Life in prison without the possibility of parole is the alternative to execution presented by those that consider words to be equal to reality. Nothing prevents the people sentenced in this way from being paroled under later laws or later court rulings. Furthermore, nothing prevents them from escaping or killing again while in prison. After all, if they have already received the maximum sentence available, they have nothing to lose. For example, in 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court banished the death penalty. Like other states, Texas commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment. After being r...
Proponents of the death penalty are right to argue that capital punishment does provide a sense of “closure” to those who are faced with the tragedy of losing a loved one due to homicide, but they exaggerate when they claim that this is the only means by which murderers receive just punishment for their crimes. Advocates of the death penalty fail to recognize that there are alternative methods – such as psychotherapy – that are able to replace the barbaric method of the death penalty.