Capital Punishment or Death Penalty Problem - Research Paper Example

 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT Abstract The death penalty should be abolished in the United States because it is inhumane and uncivilized. Nevertheless, despite the fact that it is cruel, many people still consider capital punishment as mandatory to the society. However, in my opinion, this type of punishment is not well chosen. In addition, if a criminal had been killed because of a death sentence, but it turned out that the criminal had never committed a felony, it could be a catastrophic disaster. Every walking man in death row has this sound ringing through their ears a thousand times a day that they are a “dead man walking”. Capital punishment is one of the most controversial topics among Americans today. Since every person has their own opinion on this topic, either for or against, the question always raised is "Is it morally right?" The number of problems with the death penalty is enormous, ranging from innocence to racism, and these problems will never be resolved unless the death penalty is abolished. The Death Penalty/Capital Punishment Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is the execution of a convicted criminal by the state as a punishment for crimes known as capital crimes or capital offences. The death penalty is a widely discussed issue in the United States and worldwide. Should governments impose the death penalty for crimes? On the other hand, should the punishment be life imprisonment without parole? Why should the government be able to abolish the death penalty and impose life imprisonment without parole? Death penalty is the most severe of all sentences. It requires law enforcement officers to kill the offender. It has been banned in many countries, including the United States, in the past. However, more and more states are resorting to capital punishment, or the death penalty, for serious offenses such as murder. The death penalty does not bring justice to either the victim or the perpetrator. We should abolish the death penalty and replace it with the sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole. That way we will ensure that an innocent life is not taken away. Whether capital punishment should be upheld or abolished, it has been one of the most controversial issues in the justice system, not only in America but also all over the world. According to Rosenbaum (1991), there are many wrongful convictions, factors, and errors to abolish the death penalty: In the past, the criminal justice system had executed innocent people for crimes that they did not commit, because of many wrongful executions, which should be enough to justify the abolition of the death penalty. Many members of our society have been against the death penalty for many reasons: One of these reasons is that we will never have enough technology to solve the problem of innocent death-row inmates; human errors will always be a factor in criminal investigations. Human errors are very common because we are human. This is one of the most important factors that we believe that our criminal system should believe also to abolish the death penalty is human error. One last reason that is extremely important is the risk of executing an innocent person, and this has been known to happen before. All of these reasons seem to be very acceptable in backing up the decision to abolish capital punishment in United States. (pp. 136-139) Is legally killing someone morally justified by the law? Which punishment is harsher in reality: being killed, or living out the rest of your life in a prison cell where you have to think about what you did every moment of the day? The Death Penalty Information Center keeps an "Innocence List" which names incarcerated people who have been exonerated since 1973. There are 119 to date. Many people also agree that they are a percentage of condemned inmates that are actually innocent. People can receive wrongful convictions and be in death row for many reasons: inadequate legal representation, police and prosecutorial misconduct, perjured testimony and mistaken eyewitness testimony, racial prejudice, jailhouse snitch testimony, suppression and/or misinterpretation of mitigating evidence, and community/political pressure to solve a case. Faulty eyewitness identifications, false testimony, the police does not like the person because of color and class are not strong evidence to just send someone to death row. According to Ernest Van Den Haag, “capital punishment is irreversible. No one can return the years spent in prison to a person who had been wrongfully imprisoned” (p. 257). Prejean (1994) stated that “everyone can argue that he or she was just doing a job—the governor, the warden, the head of the Department of Corrections, the district attorney, the judge, the jury, the Pardon Board, the witnesses to the executions” (p. 101). If this were just a job, then why do so many people feel that this is violence against violence? Why should we use violence against violence while we are trying to be a fair society? If we execute a murderer, is it not the same as we committing the same murder? Do we have the right to sentence people to death for murder? If you believe in an eye for an eye theory, then yes. However, it is a rather hypocritical idea. For the crime of murder, our society tries to show how wrong it is by murdering the murderer. If it is against the law, then why does the government give permission? All human beings have the right and privilege to their own lives. However, do the lives of others belong to us? Do we have the right to decide the kind of lives others can or cannot live or have? No one has the right to decide what kind of life we should live and no one has the right to take someone else’s life, nor does the person that is committing the crime has the right to kill also. However, if the killing has already occurred, we should not need to repeat another killing by executing the perpetrator. Just because the perpetrator has already taken one life, that does not mean his/her life belongs to us. It is bad enough that one life has already been taken away by the criminal; there is no need to do the same thing. Our justice system should work harder in finding another solution rather than executing someone as a punishment. Executing someone is the worst kind of teaching technique that can be used to prevent crimes. According to Benjamin Rush (1792), the death penalty is “immoral and should be abolished” (pp. 181-185). What are the effects of the death penalty? Many people agree that the effect of death penalty, first, is to use violence in dealing with problems; second, to make humans to become emotionally desensitized to the sight of blood, suffering, and killing; and finally, to place little value on human life. To be moved—an eye for and eye, a life for a life, or a tooth for a tooth—is an action of revenge or vengeance. Neither revenge nor vengeance will bring our victim back to life; therefore, we should not take another life for our own or our loved ones’. I know that the Bible mentions it, and people have been using it regularly for centuries. People have been using it in many cases such as burglary, adultery, love and many other situations. However, some people use it on a higher level that is too powerful. Some people use it to decide whether the perpetrator should live or die. Regardless of the crime, we should not decide who has the right to live or die because we are just human. For example, my grandmother used to say this proverb: “When one steals from those who stole from him, one wrongs those who have wronged him.” Should those be punished to die? But do we really have the right to kill those who have killed? Death penalty is nothing but a form of revenge and there is no justice in executing the killer, because executing the killer will not bring your loved ones back. Most people believe that the death penalty brings closure to the victim’s families and loved ones. Losing a loved one is hard for anyone. And for most, it is not enough to simply have the perpetrator locked away for life. We understand the fact that family members and loved ones want and need closure in order to move on with their lives, but would execution really bring that closure? Or are family members so occupied for revenge and vengeance that they totally forget that the death row will not bring their loved ones back? Truly, there is no purpose to the death penalty other than vengeance, yet it seems that our society has sunk to such a level that even vengeance is acceptable to most. Is the death penalty right or wrong? The idea of putting another human to death is hard to completely understand. The physical mechanics involved in the act of execution are easy to grasp, but the emotions involved in carrying out a death sentence on another person, regardless of how much they deserve it, is beyond my own understanding. I know and see how painful, dehumanizing, and sickening it can be. However, for many supporters, sometimes it is necessary and it is a duty for the criminal justice to take responsibility to carry out justice. Wrongful conviction is morally wrong for the judges, the jury, and the prosecutors to decide who should live or who should die. They are not God; discrimination is unfair, unjust and should not be allowed. Our criminal justice system should protect people and be able to protect society, and should not be infected by prejudice and discrimination. From the last couple of decades, so many defendants were released from death row. Many factors can lead to wrongful convictions. They are, for example: inadequate legal representation, police and prosecutorial misconduct, perjured testimony and mistaken eyewitness testimony, racial prejudice, jailhouse snitch testimony, suppression and/or misinterpretation of mitigating evidence, and community/political pressure to solve a case. All these factors can lead to the killings of many innocent people in the USA. According to the Journal of Gender, Race and Justice, “a myriad of studies have shown the race of the defendant and the race of the victim play a substantial role in determining whether a defendant will face the death penalty”. The death penalty is unfair when we only use it against minorities and the poor. If we decide to make a law, we should make it to serve all individuals equally. In so many cases that I have seen, I noticed that the minorities and the blacks are more likely to receive death penalty sentences because of discrimination and prejudice. Although the system is wrong and unfair, minorities should not be judged based on economic status, and neither based on their class, gender, race, and color. Our juridical system should be giving equal rights to everyone, and everyone should have the right to have a fair trial regardless of who they are. A recent study from the Journal of Gender, Race, and Justice had shown that “death is more likely to be imposed against black defendants than white defendants…” Ineffectiveness of court- appointed attorneys add references. It is easier to put black minorities to jail because they are misrepresented by their lawyers, because their lawyers are appointed to them from the court, because they are minorities and they cannot afford they own lawyer. Being represented by a public defender because the person does not have money to pay for his/her own lawyer is enough to convict the person with a crime. Public defenders are over-loaded with city cases and salaried by the court, thus they do not have sufficient time to spend for people who cannot afford to pay their own lawyer. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in 1967, a moratorium was placed on the death penalty as the Supreme Court debated its constitutionality. In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty violated the Eighth Amendment, which protects Americans from "cruel and unusual" punishment largely because it was determined not to be applied fairly. In 1976, the Court ruled that, in certain cases, the death penalty was a legitimate punishment, and now, it is practiced in all but 13 states and the District of Columbia. However, in December 2008, the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment made the recommendation to abolish capital punishment in the state of Maryland. In the commission report, it gives several reasons behind the Commission’s decision. One reason is that the commission found substantial disparities based on race and jurisdiction. These disparities are very great among similar cases that make the process arbitrary. New paragraph, references needed I know for sure that blacks are not over-populated than other races in United States. My conclusion is: What is really going on? If our states and countries are using the death penalty and believe in its justice, why is it that more than half of the inmates on death row are black? What kind of justice is that? The race seems to play a huge role in the determination of the sentencing. For example if a black male had stolen a small item from a store, he would get sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, if a white male committed the same crime, he would only get probation. That proves it is more likely an issue of race than crime. In addition, if a black man murders someone, the death penalty is the most that he is going to get, as a sentence. Is that a sentence of justice or a sentence on prejudice of being black? In many states with death penalty cases, the race of the victim is much more important than the prior criminal record of the defendant, or the actual circumstances of the crime. A study was done by the Death Penalty Information Center Source Bureau of Justice stated that more than one-half of people, the people on death row are people of color. Race and the crime are a very important factor in determining who is going to be sentenced to die. I do not believe that our juridical system should take such immoral behavior to our justice system. Obviously, it is reasonable for the white wealthy middle class individual or perhaps for a normal white person to get away with murder because no one is discriminating them, and most likely, they can afford to pay their own bail, their family can help them pay for it, and they can hire any lawyer that they desire. Convicting someone for a crime that they did not commit and sentencing them to death penalty is the most cruel and unusual punishment that any human being can deal with. We deserve equal protection from the law to protect us without judging us. Executing a person for committing a crime is the most horrible spectacle that anyone could witness. How can you sit at the waiting room, watching another human being executed whether or not they committed the crime? You must be the same as the person that committed the crime. Is the death penalty effective? A fundamental question raised by the death penalty is whether the death penalty is really effective? Or is it more effective than the alternative which is long-term imprisonment? According to scientific studies, many studies have failed to show any strong evidence that the death penalty deters crime better than other punishments. I realize that the only reason some people support the death penalty is to lessen their pain as a victim. When our criminal authorities find someone guilty of murder and sentence him/her to death, does that not make them murderers? Many people that are against death penalty have no other way to justify that justice other than we ourselves are committing a murder if we sentence a criminal to death. On the contrary, many people who agree with death penalty would think otherwise. For example, people who support capital punishment think that society sympathizes with the perpetrators rather than the victims. They also believe that everyone is too busy feeling sorry for the criminal who was just sentenced to death, rather than for the victim who was heinously murdered, raped, or scarred for life. I truly believe that is not the case. We do not feel sympathy, sorry, or pity for the perpetrator, but we are trying to prevent revenge or vengeance. People that are for capital punishment need to accept the fact that what was done was done; and we cannot bring our loved ones back to life by executing the killer. The best we can do for our victims is to make sure that our criminal justice system would bring about justice by putting the criminal away for life without parole. We cannot execute someone for a crime that they had not committed, because our justice system cannot justify what kind of act is that by doing so. Their anger and need for vengeance towards criminals is what maters to them. As it stands now, I believe seventeen states or more still have the death penalty, and it serves as a consequence for only the most human murder crimes. Add to this paragraph and Look for exact statistic and quotes?? God knows what a person has done and will do. He in His own righteousness will take care of them during or after life. Are we that egotistical as a society to believe that we have the right to do God's work and punish a person with death? Add to this paragraph and Look for exact quotes?? Prison system is an effective alternative to the death penalty because it is in all human nature to want justice in everything. From the day we were born and able to speak, we demonstrated to our children as soon as they can speak how to seek justice. For example, "That's not fair! She has more ice cream than me!" We, as adults, must always be on top of the situation to sort things out because if one of the children gets less than the other, the result will be negative and usually in the form of a tantrum. We are all the same. Imagine if you lost a loved one due to another person's carelessness or evil intent, how would you feel? Would you be okay with that person getting ten to twenty years in prison and then released? It would be slightly more of a punishment if the inmates did not have television, a place to work out, and a library. Prison for many people is nothing but paid living. For many people, if an individual who commits murder is unable to be reformed or be re-established into society, then she/he should be removed from society. However, some people feel that there is no use to let the criminal alive because they are a danger to society if they ever escape. They are very unlikely to feel bad about what they did when they can waste their lives in front of a television, and many people argue that we are paying for them to stay alive. Add to this paragraph and Look for exact quotes?? The perception of some people is that many of us feel that our taxes go right to the prison to help keep the killers of our sons, our daughters, our fathers, our mothers, our friends, and our lovers alive. This idea is indeed infuriating. At the same time, killing the killers would not bring them back. We would only be repeating the cycle of violence by executing them. Being sentenced to life imprisonment without parole is not necessarily enough punishment. For many people, jail is much better than the outside world. You get free food, and a safe place to stay without thinking when the rent is due. That punishment is not enough to dehumanize a human being that has been sentenced to life in prison. Some people think a punishment is supposed to show you that you did something wrong, and to teach you not to do it again. How can you forget what you did wrong, you are spending the rest of life in jail, where there is no life, very dark, sometimes you even forgot what day is it? How can you be able to commit the same crimes again, if you are already sentenced to life in prison? Is it effective Add to this and research for effectiveness of death penalty Research to back up this part. The death penalty is a good way to simply get rid of dangerous people. However, it is not a punishment! Getting rid of dangerous people is not the solution to the problem; the solution to the problem is that we need to come up with a better problem-solver instead of executing a killer. For one thing, most murderers are probably so messed up that death would be a welcome solution to their problem. In addition, the way they are killed is virtually painless; they do not experience the agony that their victims went through. Why should we set them free by executing them? To kill a killer only causes more pain to his family and those close to him. They are not at fault for the crime committed. They do not deserve to suffer for the relentless actions of their own kin. Justice cannot be served if pain is to be inflicted upon the innocent. Life in prison is the best solution. Seeing a killer suffer in jail for the rest of his life, knowing that every single day he must reflect upon the pain he has caused is more effective than watching him go to his death without an ounce of sorrow or remorse. Murder is a vicious crime. Let us prevent our government from causing more to happen. We should abolish the death penalty.   Specific, address the question of what alternative exist please provide research? I think that if we really wanted to, we could change the system in a way that would help these people, rather than just get rid of them. For most of the people that commit vicious crimes, like serial killers, or perpetrators, instead of our government killing them for their crime, why do governments not invent some creative methods of showing these criminals why their actions are wrong? Somehow giving them a new chance at a better life because, at some point, there must be a reason why they are the way they are. I am not making excuses for them, what they did is wrong, no one should take someone else’s life away regardless of the reason, but I believe that the perpetrators deserve a chance lo live life to full extent until they are called by God for His sentence. It would be expensive and extremely difficult to invent a method to help them, but maybe in the future, we will be able to really help these people instead of just shoving them aside. Another reason against executing capital punishment is the cost. A capital punishment case costs far more than where the capital punishment is not sought and it is thought that the resources could be better spent somewhere else. The Death Penalty Information Center was able to give a figure of how much taxpayers spend on death row every year, “…death penalty cases typically require huge expenditures, partly because of re-trials to correct prior errors. California’s Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, for example, has estimated that the state is spending $138 million a year on the death penalty”. . Add more use references to back it up As of January 1, 2009, 37 states have death row/capital punishment and the military. California has more people in death row than any other States. Total Number of Death Row Inmates as of January 1, 2009: 3,297. References Baldus, D. C., Woodworth, G., & Pulaski, C. A. (1990). Equal Justice and the Death Penalty: A Legal and Empirical Analysis. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Bender, D., Leone, B., & Winters, P. (Eds.). (1986). The Death Penalty: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Inc. Does the death penalty deter? (2006). The Wilson Quarterly. 77.2 Retrieved from the Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. John P. Conrad, Ernest Van Den Haag. (1983). Death, Rehabilitation, the Bible, and Human Dignity. New York: Basic Books. Hook, D. D & Kahn, L. (1989). Death in the Balance: The Debate over Capital Punishment. Lexington & Toronto: Lexington Books. Prejean, H. (1994). Dead Man Walking. New York: Vintage Books. Simpson, S. L. (2009). Everyone else is doing it, why can’t we? A new look at the use of statistical data in death penalty cases. Journal of Gender, Race and Justice, 12.3, 509-544. Schaba, W. (1993). The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law. Cambridge: Grotius Publications. Taylor, S. Jr. (2001). Does The Death Penalty Save Innocent Lives? National Journal, 33.2, 1551. Thomas, S. & DiIulio, J.J. Jr. (1997). The Death Penalty Is a Deterrent. Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: Greenhaven Press. The HISTORY of ISSUES The Death Penalty….. Williams, K. H. (1992). The Innocent Die with the Guilty. National Law Journal, 14(42), 15-16. Read More