Capital Punishment Pros And Cons Essay

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IN THE SHADOW OF THE PITTS AND LEE CASE: The Pros and Cons of Capital Punishment
The shock waves could be felt from the lazy northern town of Live Oak, Florida to the scattered recesses of the Dry Tortugas in the southern furthermost tip of the Florida Keys (SunSentinel). The 1963 case of Wilbert Lee and Freddie Pitts, death row inmates for nine years were pardoned by then Florida governor Reuben Askew. Pitts and Lee, convicted in the deaths of two white gas station attendants in 1963 languished on death row for a crime they did not commit (SunSentinel). Denied a jury of their peers and due process an all-white jury found the pair worthy of death by sentencing them to two counts of capital crime (SunSentinel).
While there are many reasons …show more content…

The judicial decree that someone be punished in this manner is a death sentence, while the actual enforcement is an execution. Capital punishment, death penalty or execution is punishment by death. The sentence that someone be punished in this manner is a death sentence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The capital offenses include espionage, treason, and death resulting from aircraft hijacking. However, they mostly consist of various forms of murder such as murder committed during a drug-related drive-by shooting, murder during a kidnapping, murder for hire, and …show more content…

These disparaties and injustices are obviously signs of racism in the administration of the death penalty. It 's very sad to see that this racism is still rooted in our society after all that has been done to get rid of it (SunSentinel). This racist behavior is still prevalent today as evidenced by the Police brutality cases where young Blacks are mowed down from Ferguson, Missouri to the streets of New York City (SunSentinel). Finally, in 1998 the state of Florida finally closed a sad chapter of its history but Wilbert Lee and Freddie Pitts may never heal from what can only be called a miscarriage of justice

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