Death Penalty Essay, Research Paper

Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment is defined as the legal infliction of the death penalty. Today, in modern law, the death penalty is corporal punishment in its most severe form. It ends the existence of those punished, instead of temporarily imprisoning them. Although capital punishment is not intended to inflict physical pain, execution is the only corporal punishment still applied to adults. The usual alternative to the death penalty is life-long imprisonment.

The earliest historical records contain written evidence of capital punishment. Applied from ancient times in most societies, it has been used as punishment for crimes ranging from petty theft to murder. The bible called for more than thirty different crimes. The death penalty for American colonies before the Revolution was commonly authorized for a wide variety of crimes. Blacks were threatened with death for many crimes that were punished less severely when committed by whites.

Not until the ends of the 18th century were efforts made to abolish the death penalty. Quakers led the movement in England and America. Many states in the United States, led by Michigan in 1847, abolished the death penalty entirely. However since complete abolition could never be achieved, reformers concentrated on limiting the scope of capital punishment. In 1794, Pennsylvania adopted a law to distinguish the degrees of murder and only used the death penalty for pre-meditated first-degree murder. Another reform took place in 1846 in Louisiana. The state abolished the mandatory death penalty and authorized the option of sentencing a capital offender to life imprisonment rather than to death. After the 1830?s, public executions ceased to be demonstrated but did not completely stop until after 1936.

The methods of execution have changed over the ages. The death penalty has been inflicted in many ways now regarded as barbaric and forbidden by law almost everywhere. Some ways it was inflicted in the past was crucifixion, boiling in oil, drawing and quartering, impalement, beheading, burning alive, crushing, tearing, stoning, and drowning. These types of punishments today are considered cruel and unusual punishment. In the United States, the death penalty is currently authorized in one of five ways: hanging, electrocution, the gas chamber, firing squad, or lethal injection. These methods of execution compared to those of the past are not meant for torture, they are not meant for punishment for heinous crime.

Some questions that arise in the controversial issue of capital punishment is if it is a deterrent for crime or is it more effective than life imprisonment? Defenders of the death penalty insist that taking an offender?s life is a more severe punishment than any prison term, it must be a better deterrent. Public opinion in America supports the death penalty by a more than two to one margin and this view rest largely on the deterrence of crime from this severe punishment. An example of these statistics dome from the states comes from the state of Florida. Support for death penalty changes when alternatives are added. When simply asked whether they favor the death penalty, 80 percent of Floridians said they did. When asked whether they favor the death penalty or life without parole, the figures drop to 70 percent, and then to 60 percent when restitution is added to the equation. The cost is also an issue that critics of the death penalty attack. In Florida, it costs $3.2 million on each death row inmate, compared to about $535,000 for an average of 40 years for each prisoner sentenced to life. This is a huge amount of tax payers money but the public looks at it as an investment in safety since these murderers will never kill again.

Those who argue against the death penalty as a deterrent to crime say the following statements. Adjacent states, in which one has a death penalty and the other does not, show no long-term differences in the number of murders that occur in the state. States that use the death penalty seem to have a larger number of homicides than states that do not use it. Also, states that have abolished the death penalty and then reinstituted it show no significant change in the murder rate. And finally, there has been no record of change in the rate of homicides in a given city or state seems to occur following a local execution. The intent of scaring a possible murderer not to kill or kill again because of the penalty of death according to critics has little affect. The current prevailing view among criminologists is that no conclusive evidence exists to show that death as punishment is a more affective deterrent to violent criminal activity than life-long imprisonment.

Another controversial aspect of the death penalty is that innocent people are killed even though they did not commit any crime. The executing of the innocent is very rare. From 1900 to 1985, a recent survey found that 7000 people were executed by the means of death penalty and 35 were innocent of capital crimes. Proponents of the death penalty say that despite precautions, nearly all-human activities, such as trucking, lighting, or construction, cost the lives of innocent bystanders. These activities, however, are not simply abandoned, because the advantages moral or material, outweigh the unintended losses. Critics have also argued that an alternative can be found to substitute for the death penalty. They feel that the severity of the crime can match the severity of the punishment and does not require the primitive rule of ?an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.?

In the United States, the objection to capital punishment has been that it was always used unfairly, in at least three major ways. First, females are rarely sentenced to death and executed, even though women committed 20 percent of all murders that have occurred in recent years. Second, a disproportionate number of nonwhites are sentenced to death and executed. A black man who kills a white person is 11 times more likely to receive the death penalty than a white man who kills a black person is. In Texas 1991, blacks made up 12 percent of the population, but 48 percent of the prison population and 55.5 percent of those on death row are black. Before the 1970’s ?hen the death penalty for rape was still used in many states, no white men were guilty of raping nonwhite women, whereas most black offenders found guilty of raping a white women were executed. This data can show how the death penalty can discriminate and can be used on certain races rather than equally as punishment for severe crimes. And third, poor and friendless defendants, those who are inexperienced or of court-appointed counsel are most likely, are most likely to be sentenced to death and executed. Defenders of the death penalty, however argue that, because nothing found in the laws of capital punishment causes sexist, racist, or class bias in its use, these kinds of discrimination are not a sufficient reason for abolishing the death penalty on the idea that it discriminates or violates the 8th amendment of the United States Constitution. Opponents of capital punishment have replied to this by saying that the death penalty is subject to miscarriage of justice and that it would be impossible to administer fairly.

I, myself feel strongly toward using the death penalty as punishment for unspeakable crimes. I feel that it is a deterrent for criminal activity because of its severity and it will never allow the murderer to murder again and tear apart another family. I do, however, feel that restrictions should be put on its uses. Not all crimes deserve the death penalty. Let the punishment fit the crime. If a criminal commits a premeditated murder he should be put to death. If a convicted offender shows no remorse for his actions, then the decision should be even easier. I feel in the future it is important to send out a message to all those murderers that taking the life of another human is wrong and if they decide to try it the penalty is: DEATH.

People who enjoy killing do not deserve to walk on the streets. Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit to happiness and no one has the right to take that away from another person. As I said, above, I feel strongly toward the use of the death penalty. I also feel Capital punishment is necessary for a stable society and should never be abolished.

Bibliography

 Goldberg, Arthur J. ? The Death Penalty ?, New York: Plenum Press, 1983

 Black Jr.,Charles L. ? Capital Punishment ?, New York: WWNorton & Company, 1978

 Bedau, Hugo Adam ? The Death Penalty in America ? New York: Oxford University Press, 1982

 Costanzo, Mark ? Just Revenge, Costs and Consequences of the Death Penalty ? New York: St. Martin?s Press, 1997