Our prejudiced minds and clouded vision make us believe that all black men are criminals resulting in a twisted criminal justice system. Thomas Sancton (1991) reveals, "...blacks and Hispanics are proportionally far more likely to be sent to death chambers than whites; that poor defendants are condemned more often than rich ones; that the existence of the death penalty, despite widespread beliefs to the contrary, in fact has no deterrent value. The execution in some states of minors and retarded inmates is profoundly shocking to many people in the U.S. And abroad, as is the multiplicity of judicial errors that have sent innocent people to execution chambers or long terms on death row."
Regardless of what people have to say about death penalty, researches and unbiased studies have shown that this form of punishment doesn't serve any good purpose. It exists because society refuses to operate with compassion but revels in intense hatred of criminals. Posner (2002) shed further light on this, "The support for capital punishment is based primarily on retributive motives, or more bluntly on notions of vengeance, or simply on hatred of criminals and crime, and on the discrediting of "progressive," therapeutic approaches to crime that are associated in the public mind with the increase in the crime rate that began in the 1960s. We are not so far from the eighteenth century as we may have thought we were, when execution could be compared to "the cutting of a Wart or a Wen from the Body."
Death penalty is opposed not only because it hurts and violates a criminal's right to life and forgiveness but also because it is often used unfairly to target innocent people. Despite the best efforts of criminal justice system, death penalty is one form of punishment that cannot always be awarded fairly in 100% of cases. And the worst part is that once this...
Death Penalty One is most deterred by what one fears most. From which it follows that whatever statistics fail, or do not fail, to show, the death penalty is likely to be more deterrent than any other. FACTS: If it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove statistically, and just as hard to disprove, that the death penalty deters more from capital crimes than available alternative punishments do (such as life imprisonment), why
It would seem that many criminals would find this more amusing than frightening. They do not take their chances of being caught and subjected to capital punishment seriously enough to be frightened by the penalty like many assume they will be (van den Haag, 2001). According to some who believe in God and feel that capital punishment is acceptable under the scriptures, there is one main point, which is that
An interesting and similar development in juvenile justice is the issue of life imprisonment as a cruel and unusual sentence for juvenile offenders. This issue is addressed by Mark Sherman (2009). Sherman states that Joe Sullivan was 13 years old when he attacked and raped an elderly woman. The court judged him as incorrigible and therefore sentenced him to life without parole. Another example is that of Terrance Graham, who
As such, it is unlikely to change in light of knowledge or information about the death penalty and its administration" (Vollum & Buffington-Vollum, p. 30). Furthermore, "those who scored higher on value-expressive attitudes were less accepting of information critical of the death penalty and, in turn, less likely to change their views in light of the information presented." Thus, the widespread support of the death penalty in the face
Capital Punishment In more than half the countries of the world, there is no death penalty as was the case in Australia for a long time. As many as 76 countries do not have death penalty for any crime. In Australia, Queensland was the first among the states to abolish death penalty in 1922 and the last death penalty was carried out in 1913. (Capital Punishment) In many countries, punishment is very
[DPIC] Similarly, many other researches were conducted but failed to offer any conclusive evidence as to the effectiveness of capital punishment in deterring crimes. The lack of consistency in these results presents a complex problem before us in evaluating the utilitarian value of death penalty. One more aspect to be considered under the utilitarian thought is the cost of executions. It is well-known that the legal cost of executions in
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