Capital Punishment

The right of the state to take the life of a person convicted of certain crimes is deeply rooted in concepts of governmental sovereignty and has been recognized in England as the source of our Common Law and most other historic governmental systems around the world throughout history. In the beginning of the twenty-first century, many are beginning to doubt the wisdom of government sanctioned murder under the name of capital punishment in criminal justice system. There is debate over the morals and effectiveness of such a harsh and irreversible sentence. Most commonly, the death penalty is challenged as a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which says that the U.S. cannot use "cruel and unusual" punishment. The purpose of our entire criminal justice system is to protect the rights of life, liberty, and property for all its citizens. To do this, the punishment for crime must be harsh enough to deter potential criminals. Unfortunately, the death penalty may just be an easy escape for the criminal. Criminals should have to face the enormity of the crimes they committed everyday of their lives - they need a punishment to fit their crime. If the society kills the killers, then the moral line between the killer and the society becomes blurred. The death penalty is state sponsored killing. Capital punishment should be stopped, because it is unjust, ineffective deterrent, and a broken system.

First, capital punishment can not be justified. Capital punishment is a serious failure of humanity, immoral and an act of torture. Every human being deserves the dignity of life. This includes the most brutal of murderers. It is an indication of how little our government values human life. We do not condone torture or cruelty but it cannot be denied that some executions are botched and those executed suffer extended pain. Even those who die instantly suffer mental anguish leading up to the execution. Examples of torture and cruelty are documented in Florida within the last few years. In 1997, Pedro Medina's head caught fire while he was being electrocuted in Florida (Progressive 65). State attorney general Bob Butterworth commented, "People who wish to commit murder, they better not do it in the state of Florida, because we may have a problem with our electric chair (Progressive 65). In 1999, that state had another botched execution in June, Allen Lee Davis started to bleed profusely from the nose and appeared to suffer extreme pain during electrocution. After the machine was turned off, he continued to breath. "Witnesses say his chest rose and fell about ten times before he went still," reported the New York Times (Progressive 65). Florida's legislative solution to these atrocities has been to offer an alternative method of execution in the form of lethal injection. Although the electric chair is gruesome, other methods of execution currently practiced in other areas of the United States- particularly hanging and the gas chamber- are capable of producing excruciating pain as well. Robert Murray was sentenced to death for two murders he committed with his brother in 1991 who is imprisoned in Arizona. Murray expressed his own feelings in the following statement,

They have given me two methods to consider: lethal injection and lethal gas. I often imagine myself in the gas chamber and try to guess at the difference between dying there and dying by lethal injection. But I just keep coming back to the outcome. I wanted to ask someone's advice about which method I should choose, but dead is dead,... there is much more to death by injection than just falling asleep, beginning with the long wait on death row, the terror of being taken to the death house, the helpless panic of being strapped to a table, and finally the sense of utter loss as the curtain is opened. (Murray 60)

Sunil Dutta is a sergeant of the Los Angeles police department, expressed his own opinion about capital punishment,

As a police officer, I often see the results of human depravity. I see incidents of such brutal behavior that my compassion dissolves like a candle flame swept by a tornado... the practice of capital punishment, particularly by our "justice system," reveals a serious failure in our humanity. We no longer burn witches or keep slaves or have monarchs dictate our lives. Capital punishment is similarly anachronistic. (Dutta 41)

In addition to inhumanity, by providing death penalty- the society is playing as a god which is an immoral activity. Not only do the societies play the role of God by judging who will die and who will live, by supporting the death penalty we send out the dangerous message to impressionable minds that violence is a way to resolve problems.

Secondly, capital punishment does not deter crime. It is not a deterrent because anyone that would be deterred by the death penalty would already have been deterred by life in prison, and people that are not deterred by that would not be stopped by any punishment. This argument is typically supported by claims that those states which have implemented the death penalty recently have not had a reduction of violent crime. A stronger variant of this argument suggests that criminals who believe they will face the death penalty are more likely to use violence or murder to avoid capture, and that therefore the death penalty might theoretically even increase the rate of violent crime. January 17, 1997 on the 20th anniversary of the first execution in the United States, a University of Florida researcher's study shows 90 percent of the nation's top criminologists say killing people to deter violent crime is an immense waste of time and money (Hunter 125). If somebody knew that if a person killed someone, the person would automatically be executed, they might choose not to kill. The fact is, it is not certain that all murderers will be executed. Some will be finding innocent, some sentences will be appealed, and some defendants will be found insane and not even go to jail. The point is that right now murderers are not faced with the certainty of their deaths. In 1995, a total of 3,054 prisoners were sentenced to death, but of those only fifty-six were actually executed (Hunter 119). It is hard to fear for death when there is a very small risk of actually dying. The death penalty does not deter murder because most murders are either "crimes of passion" or are planned by people who do not think they will be caught. Further, the system interferes with the international prosecution of criminals who commit serious crimes because countries which do not favor capital punishment in their own borders refuse to extradite criminals sought by the United States where there is a possibility of the death penalty if the fugitive is returned to this country.

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