Death Penalty -- Part One
"The Death Penalty Costs Too Much" -- George Sjostrom: The arguments presented by Sjostrom follow other similar lines of argument by those who oppose the death penalty. He doesn't take the ethical line or the line that putting a criminal to death doesn't deter crime. He is concerned with dollars and cents. And he alludes to the emotional price society pays for putting a person to death. It costs California taxpayers about $250 million to execute a felon (he bases that on the last 11 executions in California; it includes the cost of the trial, and the other long, drawn-out legal procedures, appeals, new trials) but it costs a lot less to just house a criminal who gets life without the possibility of parole. On top of the high cost of trial and legal fees, Sjostrom (they have to deal with the guilt of putting a person to death) and for the family of the felon, there are powerful emotions that cannot be denied. Sjostrom wants the death penalty in California to end.
"The Death Penalty Does Not Cost Too Much" -- Jon Sorensen. In this essay the author is taking the opposite position that Sjostrom has taken. Sorenson asserts that there is "questionable math" involved in the arguments presented by Sjostrom and others. He questions a study in the Dallas Morning News (that estimates a typical death penalty cases costs $2.3 million) and claims that in fact the cost of putting someone to death in Texas is about the same as keeping a prisoner incarcerated for 40 years. He says the claim that life imprisonment is cheaper than putting a felon to death is "intellectually dishonest" -- and insists that execution is "…less costly than warehousing a murderer for life" (198). He blames "death-penalty opponents" for driving up the costs of death penalty cases. None of Sorensen's arguments have to do…
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
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 in the United States Capital punishment is one of the comprehensive, but debatable punishments given to criminal offenders in the U.S. And many other nations across the globe. Capital punishment involves the issuance of the death penalty because of committing serious crimes like crime in the society. Capital punishment has received tumultuous public support touching both ends of the society with its authorization in thirty-seven American states. It is
From 1977 to 2007, the number of death sentences per capita was as follows: Alabama .89, Oklahoma .818, Mississippi .558, Nevada .546, Delaware .497, North Carolina .481, Florida .463, South Carolina .422, Arizona .412, Arkansas .399, Texas .379, Louisiana .342, Missouri .313, Pennsylvania .277, Ohio .270, Tennessee .270, Idaho .267, Georgia .236, Illinois .233, California .219, Kentucky .193, Virginia .192, Oregon .184, Indiana .148, Nebraska .147, Wyoming .134, Montana
Death Penalty All indications are that capital offenses are on the rise and the response to this phenomenon has been a cry to impose capital punishment as retribution. Certainly the issue is one of the most hotly debated in the world today; both for consideration of its humaneness as well as efficacy as a deterrent. For the purposes of this assignment we will examine the issue from both sides with the
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
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