Capital Punishment5
How do you feel about the saying, "an eye for an eye?" Do you feel that it is a good saying to run a nation by? Or do you agree with Gandhi who added to that statement, "--and everyone is blind?" There have been many controversies in the history of the United States, ranging from abortion to gun control; however, capital punishment has been one of the most hotly contested issues in recent decades. Capital Punishment is the execution of a criminal pursuant to a sentence of death imposed by a competent court. It is not intended to inflict any physical pain or any torture; it is only another form of punishment. This form of punishment is irrevocable because it removes those punished from society permanently, instead of temporarily imprisoning them, this is the best and most effective way to deal with criminals. The usual alternative to the death penalty is life-long imprisonment. Capital punishment is a method of retributive punishment as old as civilization itself. The death penalty has been imposed throughout history for many crimes, ranging from blasphemy and treason to petty theft and murder. Many ancient societies accepted the idea that certain crimes deserved capital punishment. Ancient Roman and Mosaic Law endorse
Incapacitation is another controversial aspect of the death penalty. Abolitionists say condemning a person to death removes any possibility of rehabilitation. They are confident in the life-sentence presenting the possibility of rehabilitating the convict; however, rehabilitation is a myth. The state does not know how to rehabilitate people because there are plenty of convicted murderers who kill again and again. Some of these murderers escape and kill again or they kill while still in prison. While reading different articles both on the internet and in magazines I came across many stories of inmates who kill another inmate for a piece of chicken, how pathetic is this "rehabilitation" system? The life-sentence is also a myth, because of overcrowding in prisons early parole has released convicted murderers and they still continue to kill. Incapacitation is not solely meant as deterrence but it is meant to maximize public safety by removing any possibility of a convicted murderer to murder again. The Holy Bible. Old King James Version. 1988 Dugan Publishers, Inc. The fear of death deters people from committing crimes. Still, abolitionists believe that deterrence is little more than an assumption and a naive assumption at that. Abolitionists claim that capital punishment does not deter murderers from killing or killing again. They base most of their argument against deterrence on statistics. States that use capital punishment extensively show a higher murder rate than those that have abolished the death penalty. Also, states that have abolished the death penalty and then reinstated it show no significant change in murder rate. They say adjacent states with the death penalty and those without show no long-term differences in the number of murders that occur in that state. And finally, there has been no record of change in the rate of homicides in a given city or state following a local execution. Any possibility of deterring a would-be murderer from killing has little effect. Most Retentionists argue that none of the statistical evidence proves that capital punishment does not deter potential criminals. There is absolutely no way to prove, with any certainty, how many would-be murderers were in fact deterred form killing due to the death penalty. They point out that the murder rate in any given state depends on many things besides whether or not that state uses capital punishment. They cite such factors as the proportion of urban residents in the state, the level of economic prosperity, and the social and racial makeup of the populous. But a small minority is willing to believe in these statistics and to abandon the deterrence argument. But they defend the death penalty base on other arguments, relying primarily on the need to protect society from killers who are considered high risk for killing again. In the 1970s, a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions made the death penalty in the U.S. unconstitutional, if it is mandatory, if it is imposed without providing courts with adequate guidance to make the right decision in the severity of the sentence, or if it is imposed for a crime that does not take or threaten the life of another human being. The death penalty was also confined to crimes of murder, including a felony murder. A felony murder is any homicide committed in the course of committing another felony, such as rape or robbery. After the 1972 court ruling that all but a few capital statutes were unconstitutional, thirty-seven states revised and reinstated their death penalty laws. In 1989 the Supreme Court decided that
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Approximate Word count = 2416
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)
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