Essay Introduction
Capital punishment is the scourge of the death penalty on a man prosecuted for bad behavior. Executing arraigned crooks has been a champion among the most by and large practiced kinds of criminal order in the United States. Be that as it may, this profoundly dubious type of discipline isn’t completed in the majority of the states in the country. At present, the states that don’t hone capital punishment are Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Dakota, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Notwithstanding the states that do authorize capital punishment, it has been a point of discussion for a long time. Furthermore, the significant issues identified with the death penalty with an accentuation on resistance to it.
Research Paper on Capital Punishment
There are two groups who argue over the decision to take a person’s life as a punishment for a crime. There are numerous purposes of exchange, including regardless of whether it is a fitting and sensible discipline, regardless of whether it goes about as a hindrance to wrongdoing, and regardless of whether it is ethically impartial or ethically off-base. These two classes of people can be grouped together as the ‘receptionists’ and the ‘abolitionists’ (Americana 596). For the receptionists, the primary reasons they are in the help of capital punishment are to render retribution and to rebuff. Their principle stress is the security of society from risky culprits. The receptionists have some good ideas, but they are still very wrong. The abolitionists view the death penalty as morally and legally wrong. Further, they argue that it does not act as a deterrent for crime, it is irreversible and could be used on an innocent person, it is more expensive than imprisonment, and that those who are convicted frequently invoke the expensive process of appealing the decision.
Argumentative Essay Examples on Capital Punishment
Methods of inflicting the death penalty have ranged from stoning in biblical times, crucifixion by the Romans, and beheading in France to those used in the United States today: hanging, electrocution, gas chamber, firing squad, and lethal injection. No matter how the death penalty is executed, many view it as a cruel and unusual punishment. The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which defines cruel and unusual punishment, is used to dispute capital punishment. When the Constitution was first drafted, capital punishment was widely used and had extensive approval. Many of the contributing writers of the Constitution approved of capital punishment, as did the philosophers who helped with the Constitution. In the trial of Atkins vs. the state of Virginia, the court voted that executing the mentally retarded violates the Eighth Amendment on cruel and unusual punishment (Gibeaut 2). Officials, however, often say that this punishment is not cruel and unusual. It is hard to defend that claim when you consider the electrocution of John Evans in 1983. He was electrocuted three times in fourteen minutes. After his first charges of electricity, he had smoke coming off his entire body as a result of his burning flesh. A guard at the execution even tried to stop it. With reports of actions like this, there is no room to believe it’s not cruel behavior.
Thesis Statement for Capital Punishment
The case that execution costs not as much as detainment is additionally exceptionally discussed. There are many costs related to execution: the cost of the equipment, the maintenance of the procedures attending the death penalty, death row, the endless appeals, and the legal machinery associated with them. These costs far outweigh the expense of maintaining in prison the tiny fraction of criminals who would otherwise be slain (Draper 46). Opponents argue that it is less expensive to keep them alive on death row for life than to execute them. Michael Ross, in the book Death Penalty, Opposing Viewpoints, states that All extra funds needed to investigate, prosecute, and appeal capital cases would be better spent on crime reduction efforts, including additional police officers and more prison cells (134). With a criminal case involving the death penalty, the costs are always very high. Special safeguards are required by our constitution before it can be executed. What this means is a lengthy, complex, and very expensive process of litigation over a period of years in various states and in the Federal courts (Winters 135). Opponents believe that these trials are not worth the taxpayer’s time or the court’s time.
Pros and Cons of the Death Penalty: Misallocation of Resources
The use of the death penalty results in a large diversion of funds from areas where the money is more appropriately needed. California estimates that capital trials cost nearly six times more than non-capital trials. On average, to keep an inmate in prison for forty years costs an estimated $500,000. Yet it costs an average of $3.2 million for each execution in Florida. Texas, in recent years, has had to release prisoners early from their sentence to make room for new incoming inmates. This lack of space is because Texas doesn’t have the money to spend on new jails. With Texas having the most executions of any other state, a total of $183.2 million over a six-year period has been spent on the death penalty (Winters 137). That $183.2 million could easily have been and should be spent on other areas of the government, including perhaps the construction of new jails. The process of appeals for capital cases is very expensive. Cost estimates for appealing a single capital case range from $170,000 to $219,000 (Mitchell 21). Capital appeals normally are more expensive than non-capital appeals because of many issues.
Capital Punishment Research Paper: Irreversibility of the Death Penalty
The death penalty is permanent; it isn’t irreversible. There is nothing you can do to change it once it has happened. If you apply the death penalty, you will inevitably execute some innocent people. In case of a mistake, the executed prisoner cannot be given another chance. Justice is miscarried. In the last hundred years, there have been more than seventy-five documented cases of wrongful convictions in cases of criminal homicide. The death sentence was carried out in eight of these cases. (Draper, 47). A prisoner discovered to be innocent can be freed, but neither freedom nor compensation is possible if the prisoner is dead. It is indisputable that there are still innocent people being put to death, and the chances are that innocent people have been and will continue to be executed. Patrick Leahy is quoted in, Seeking a Fair Penalty,?Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, more than a hundred people have been released from death row across the United States because of procedural errors or newly discovered evidence of innocence.? Patrick Leahy is on the Senate Judiciary Committee and is making this legislation a priority. The death of an innocent human is the most disturbing factor of any other factor applied to why the death penalty is wrong.
Argumentative Essay Against Death Penalty
The death penalty is very popular among politicians and the public in fear of escalating violence. Capital punishment, however, obstructs the fight against crime. The resources and money used in executions could bemore properly used in other areas to protect the public. ?Murders like those in abortion clinics believe their cause is just. Yet when the state kills, it sends the opposite message: the death penalty endorses violent solutions, and violence begets violence? (Leone 16).
Death Penalty Deterrence: Analysis and Counterarguments
Opponents of the death penalty argue that imprisonment deters crime just as effectively as the death penalty, therefore proving death sentences are unjustified. American penology is actually very simple. We have three means of criminal punishment: probation, incarceration, and death. And we rely upon only four jurisdictions: rehabilitation, deterrence, containment, and retribution (Bender 109). One can very easily eliminate rehabilitation as an aim for those who are executed. The rehabilitation of a dead man is very hard to accomplish. Whoever the death penalty is imposed upon surely has no chance of rehabilitation. As far as deterrence, prisoners on death row normally did not think that they would die for the crime they committed. There might be others who do think of the consequences and choose not to kill. Of those who were willing to kill, none seemed to fear the consequences. This proves that killing one person does not stop others from committing the same crime. This is very general deterrence in the big picture. The other type of deterrence is focused specifically on the convicted criminal. Of course, the death penalty is a very effective deterrence for one specific criminal. However, the death penalty just isn’t needed. Being imprisoned for life works just as well as having the death penalty imposed on an individual. Consequently, neither general nor specific deterrence is a legitimate reason for the death penalty.
Final Thoughts: The Failure of the Death Penalty
The death penalty has been a great failure. Beyond the feelings of disgust that it provokes in people, it has neither protected the innocent nor deterred the sinful. The occurrence of public killings has cheapened and taken dignity away from human life. Clearly, justice is lost in these many dilemmas.
