Capital Punishment?
Capital Punishment is the ultimate denial of human rights. There are strong indications that rather than deterring violence, it increases people's tolerance of and tendency toward violence. Though capital punishment does not deter capital crimes it does constitute a uniquely cruel and degrading punishment. It's imposition forever deprives a potentially innocent individual the benefits of new evidence or a new law that might warrant the reversal of a conviction or the setting aside of a death sentence. In addition, the cost of executing a person in the U.S. is far higher than the cost of imprisoning him or her for life. States wishing to condemn cruel and inhuman acts of killing do not serve their purpose by repeating the act of killing. Capital punishment is pre- meditated killing and, like all killing, involves a cruel and violent assault on the human body. If administering 100 volts of electricity to the most sensitive parts of a man's body is rightly condemned as torture, how does a state condone the administration of 2,000 volts to a human body in order to cause death? At a 1990 Florida execution, a malfunction of the electric chair equipment caused flames to leap six inches above the prisoner's head each time t
he current was turned on. Eleven minutes elapsed before the man died. In 1994 it took five minutes for David Lawson to die in North Carolina's gas chamber. During that time he screamed, "I'm human! I'm human!" Since 1984 there have been over 24 "botched executions," all of which have inflicted cruel and unusual punishment and have clearly violated the eighth amendment. The actual cost of an execution is substantially higher than the cost of imprisoning a person for life. A 1982 in- depth study of death penalty costs in New York placed the cost of executing a prisoner at over $1.8 million. This figure is three times the cost of imprisoning a person for life, and it includes only three stages of the judicial proceedings. It does not include additional court security, and counsel fees, nor does it include the estimated millions of dollars associated with state and federal post- conviction reviews and with the execution itself. California spends an extra $90 million per year on capital punishment. In Florida, each execution costs the state $3.2 million, six times more than incarcerating a prisoner for life. Texas, with the highest execution rate and one of the highest murder ra
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Approximate Word count = 806
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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