Life Without Parole

Capital Punishment in America

Capital punishment should be viewed as the stripping away of humanity from a person. The death penalty itself should be "executed" because of racial inequities, the concept of murder, the possibility of error, lack of deterrence, the cost, and an overwhelmed legal system. "The goal of capital punishment is revenge" (Introduction 1). Capital punishment is simply an outlet for the bloodlust of the American people (Introduction 1).

The death penalty is very discriminatory when it comes to racial issues. "The death penalty is fraught with abuses and the potential for abuse" (Moral Arguments 1). Capital punishment is largely "divided along racial lines" (Moral Arguments 1). "A 1990 report released by the Federal Government’s General Accounting Office found a ‘pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty after the Furman decision’" (Moral Arguments 1). In the 1970’s, Professor David Baldus examined sentencing patterns in Georgia. He reviewed over two-thousand five hundred homicide cases in Georgia and controlled for two-hundred and thirty non-racial factors. His conclusion was that "a person accused of killing a white was 4.3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than a person accused of killing a black" (Moral Arguments 1). Imagine the statistics when one adds the rest of the states in our country.

Capital punishment is murder. It really doesn’t matter how you look at it. The end result is still the same. "What is the difference between the state killing and an individual killing" (Moral Arguments 1). It adds up to be the same end result. It is "one more dead body, one more set of grieving parents, and one more cemetery slot. When we execute someone, we are sending a profound message of cynicism" about the value of human life (Moral Arguments 2). "Every time we execute someone," we are sinking to the same level as the killer (Moral Arguments 2). "The American people have blood on their hands, and it will stay there until we finally remove this barbaric practice from our nation" (Moral Arguments 2).

One of the most apparent reasons the d...

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... The death penalty is based upon revenge against the murderer. All it adds up to at the end of the day is another corpse to bury.

Works Cited

"Death." http://donlemaire.homestead.com/deathpen~main.html.

"Fight the Death Penalty in USA." www.fp.dk/index-uk.htm.

"Innocence and the Death Penalty." www.essential.org/dpic/innoc.html.

Greenberg, Jack. "Taking Sides." Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc. 1991.

"Introduction." http://pages.prodigy.com/DC/vortex.intro.html.

"Moral Arguments Against the Death Penalty." http://pages.prodigy.com/DC/vortex/moral.html.

"Netmonkey’s Death Penalty Page." www.netmonkey.com/1998/features/death/death8.html.

"Pragmatic Arguments Against the Death Penalty."

http://pages.prodigy.com/DC/vortex/prag.html.

United States. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. "The

Challenge of Crime in a Free Society." New York: Avon, 1968.