Death Penalty
Capital punishment in the United States is a problem that cannot be ignored. It is the legalized taking of another's life, and not a good way to punish criminals. The death penalty has no place in an advanced society like the USA. It should be abolished. One can easily see that the death penalty is not a good solution to the crime problem within this county. "Why, when we have bravely and nobly progressed so far in the recent past to create a decent, humane society, must we perpetuate the senseless barbarism of official murder (Fortas 8)?" Among advanced nations, the United States remains the chief advocate for capital punishment (Clarck 315). Evidence against it shows that it is ineffective in deterring criminals from murder, and is cruel and unfair to the supposedly guilty. Not only is capital punishment and unfair form of justice to criminals, it is a much larger burden on taxpayers, who pay more money to have someone executed than a life sentence in prison. These arguments alone stand their ground in support of abolition of the death penalty. A point of interest that must be addressed when speaking of capital punishment is the situation that is currently taking place in Illinois. Go
According to Louis Joylon West, psychiatrist-in-chief at the University Of California Los Angeles, "Capital crimes are often impulsive and unplanned. The death penalty serves no purpose in the effort to control crime, and must be seen as the most brutal, irrational kind of revenge (Spence 103)." One can also look to other countries to find statistics that back up the argument that the death penalty has no effect on capital crimes being committed or not. vernor George Ryan imposed a moratorium (freeze/hold) on the state's death penalty. All lethal injections will be postponed indefinitely pending an investigation into why more executions have been overturned than carried out since 1977, when Illinois reinstated capital punishment. The Republican governor will create a special panel to study the state's capital punishment system in general and determine what happened in the 13 specific cases in which men were wrongly convicted. "We have now freed more people than we have put to death under our system - 13 people have been exonerated and 12 have been put to death," Ryan says. "There is a flaw in the system, without question, and it needs to be studied." Capital punishment can not be fairly enforced due to the fact of innocent people being executed. One of the main foundations the American justice system is built on is fairness. It goes against the Nation's policy to enact something as unjust as the death penalty into our justice system. "This is a punishment that quite literally buries its mistakes" says Steven Hawkins, a Washington D.C. attorney and executive director of the National Coalition to abolish the death penalty. "I hope this commission will truly and thoroughly and honestly examine the facts of these 13 cases," Bill Ryan, chairman of the Illinois Moratorium Project told the Chicago Tribune. "We need an investigation of why half the cases are overturned. We need to investigate what's been going on." "We shouldn't delude ourselves, there are innocent people sitting on death row; no one denies that." Many people are familiar with the recent liberation of Orlando Cruz. Due to the persistence of professors and students at Northwestern University, eleven men including Cruz have been set free from death row since 1976. Most were the victims of prosecution misconduct, poor evidence, and inability to mount a good defense. Given the large number of narrow escapes, it is certain that some of the five hundred people executed since the mid-twenties, there were innocents (Whitaker 100). What number is considered acceptable? How many innocent people can the Untied States kill and still defend that number as sufficient to keep legalized execution. One would think that after the first, it should be stopped. This, unfortunately, is not the case. The simple truth is this, it is dangerous to preserve capital punishment. The American people deserve a better form of justice than something as archaic as Hammurabi's code. "The public fails to realize that fewer than one murderer in a thousand will be executed. Meanwhile society feels proteted, and fails to legislate improved parole procedures and penal reforms. Dangerous criminals are more likely to make their way back to the streets in those states which retain the illusion of safety created by the death penalty's false promise of justice (Spence 131)." The death penalty needs to be abolished because it fails as a deterrent, and acts as a violent motivator for s
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Approximate Word count = 2333
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)
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