¶ … Death Penalty
In the city of New Orleans, murder is an epidemic; one cannot watch a local news program or read a newspaper without hearing of another murder. The deaths and their attendant toll on families and loved ones are devastating, but the impact is not limited to the victims. Instead, this epidemic of murder impacts the entire community; the murders demonstrate a lack of respect for the value of human life, as well as a callous disregard for the rule of law. The justice system appears to be broken, and it appears that people commit murder without considering the morality of their actions or feeling the real-life consequences to them if they are caught. The disregard for the law can be understood when placed in context; even murderers who are caught, prosecuted, and convicted of their crimes tend to serve marginal sentences before being returned to the community to potentially reoffend. This is not fair to other citizens, who are responsible for the taxes that support violent offenders, only to have to face danger from them once they are released. Instead, permanent punishment options must be considered. The death penalty provides an effective means to permanently deal with violent offenders without offending the notions of cruel and unusual punishment that underlie the American criminal justice system.
Perhaps the primary legal objection to the death penalty is that it offends the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment contained in the Eighth Amendment. This argument is not valid; at the time that the Constitution was written, the death penalty was an acceptable form of punishment. Furthermore, while certain types of executions have been deemed to violate the Eighth Amendment, the actual sentence of death has not (CNN Library, pp.1-4). In fact, if one examines the historical context of the development of the death penalty, it becomes even more difficult to suggest that the death penalty violates ethical norms. "In the historic past, all countries had capital punishment, though they used it to varying degrees" (Greenberg and West, p.296). In other words, the death penalty has developed in all societies at some point in time, and has not been considered a taboo. This suggests that the death penalty is not inherently immoral, but, instead, has historically been viewed as an appropriate way to ensure retribution for certain criminal offenses. Societal standards have evolved since that time, allowing for certain reasonable restrictions on the death penalty. For example, societal standards have evolved to a point where it is considered taboo to execute members of certain groups, such as the mentally retarded, the mentally ill, and juveniles. In addition, the death penalty was previously applicable in non-murder cases, but has been determined to only be proportional when a criminal has committed a murder. These restrictions have limited the scope of the death penalty in America. However, while society has embraced certain restrictions on the death penalty, is important to keep in mind that "an overwhelming majority of Americans support a death penalty for those -- and only those -- who deserve to die" (Blecker, p.1). In fact, this support has actually increased in the time period since the 1960s (Ellsworth and Gross, p.19).
One of the primary non-legal objections to the death penalty is that it violates religious principles of forgiveness. For example, they may cite the fact that God did not condemn Cain to death for the crime as evidence that people should not be put to death for murder. However, the story actually supports the idea that there are different grades of homicide; God himself threatens to severely punish anyone who harms Cain:
Cain's relief at being marked shows that he and God believed that the threat of death -- and sometimes only the threat of a ferocious kind of death -- could deter murder. Ironically, then, the first murderer heard the first death penalty pronounced not as punishment for, but as protection from, the consequences of his own conduct (Blecker, p.3).
Three of the major world religions, Christianity,
What happens at this point is the issues are then prioritized, and the death penalty can potentially be considered less important than personal taxes, abortion, or whatever other issue the voter deems as important. This results in an extremely clouded concept of what the majority of the population actually supports in this country -- not just on the death penalty, but any issue. Ultimately this point of this argument,
Death Penalty Is Fair The Death Penalty Is a Fair Punishment for Murder Arguements have been raised concerning death penalty for a long time now. A lot of people consider death penalty as an immoral, or an unreasonable punishment. (Messerli, 2007) Despite the fact that the death sentences were a constant element of society in the past, which actually initiated from lynching and ended in the modern capital punishment and is still
" This article puts forward the notion that when analyzing the "...relationships between minority groups and mainstream populations," the issue of whether the use of "formal control is applied fairly and consistently between these different groups" is a pivotal place to begin (Ruddell, et al., 2004). It is pivotal because "injustice" not only can have "a corrosive effect" on the perception of the fairness (or unfairness) of the criminal justice system;
Death Penalty is the most severe forms of punishment that can be accorded to a criminal who has committed a crime and deserves to be punished. The brief history of death penalty shows that this is nothing new, because it was something that was practiced right from the eighteenth century BC, in Babylon, and thereafter in Athens, and in Rome, and in Great Britain. The death penalty methods of punishments
Capital Punishment Like abortion, the institution of capital punishment is a very divisive topic. The line dividing the supporters and opponents of capital punishment is variably drawn across political philosophies, race, sex and religion. The Governor of Illinois, not long ago, declared a moratorium on death penalty cases in his state. This essay is dedicated to a presentation of facts about capital punishment, without delving into personal opinions in support or
However, the reasons why people commit crime are as different as the individuals themselves. Intentional murder comes in two different flavors. The first is the carefully plotted, well thought out, planned act. In this scenario, motivational theory takes over. The person must feel that they will gain some type of value from the action. It may be that they gain something, such as money, or they may feel that
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