Execution - Right or Wrong? and the New Debate
The death penalty and execution, as a whole, has been a highly controversial issue throughout history. Those who support the death penalty believe that it is an appropriate form of punishment and that the murderer deserves to die for taking another's life. Those who are against the death penalty believe that it is not morally right to take another human's life for any reason and that execution is cruel and unusual punishment. While neither side can be "right" or "wrong" (due to the fact that it is a matter of personal values and beliefs), at some point the government must step in and make a decision as to whether or not to allow execution. The state governments (who regulate execution separately) must wrestle many issues in the forming of these laws and regulations; morality, cruel and unusual punishment as it appears in the Constitution, cost, effectiveness at deterring future criminals, and discrimination. In addition, a new question has been brought up about regulating the death penalty; should murderers with proven mental illnesses be executed? Cathy Young, a contributing editor of the Boston Globe, discusses both sides of the death penalty with mental illness arguments in her article, "New Look at Execution, mental illness.
The aforementioned issue, of the relationship between mental illness and execution, is not the only one to consider. One major issue that I am concerned about relating to the death penalty is how it is carried out. More often than not, criminals sentenced to death are not executed, but merely put in a variation of prison called Death Row. If execution is the substitution for life in prison, then what is the real difference? Sitting in prison is all that these criminals are actually doing, and they are costing the taxpayers quite a lot of money with their multiple chances for appeal. Also, the inmates that are executed are often chosen by a raffle system. Why not execute based on the seriousness of the crime, not on lotto? Lastly, in my opinion, execution should have uniform laws nationwide. It is unfair and inconsistent to allow individual states to make their own laws and to allow criminals in different states to receive different punishments for the same crime. Another case relating to death penalty with mental illness was mentioned in Young's article; the case of Ricky Ray Rector. Rector was responsible for killing an Arkansas police officer, but tests revealed that he was, "severely brain-dama
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Approximate Word count = 816
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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