Are we playing God? Have we totally forgotten humanity? When I think about death penalty it reminds me about Jesus and when he confronted the people who gathered to stone a woman who had been caught committing by saying, “If any of you have never sinned, then go ahead and throw the first stone at her.” (John 8:7) This action clearly demonstrates that Jesus believed that there was a problem in imposing death penalty because no one is sinless. Jesus did not say that adultery should not be a crime punishable by death, but he did point to a problem with imposing such a penalty. Those valuable teachings on human rights have been entirely ignored by society in the United States.
During the last decade more than 500 prisoners were executed in the United States. Another 3,500 wait on death rows. The United States is one of the very few industrialized countries in the world, which executes criminals. It is one of the few countries in the world, which executed mentally ill persons, persons with very low IQ, and child murderers (i.e. persons who were under 18 at the time of their crime). How can a first world country that embraces Christianity, as it’s main religion also embrace death penalty. Death penalty is an archaic and barbaric form of punishment whose existence should be relinquished from all legal systems of civilized societies. Let’s set the pace and protect the human right to life from such an inhuman or degrading act.
In the United States, about 13,000 people have been legally executed since colonial times. By the 1930’s up to 150 people were executed yearly. Lack of public support for capital punishment and legal challenges reduced the execution rate to near zero by 1967. In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court banned the practice, however, in 1976 the Supreme Court authorized its resumption. Each state decided whether to have the death penalty or not. As of the end of 1997, only 12 states do not have the death penalty; Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin. From 1976, when executions were resumed, to the end of 1997, there were 432 executions in the US. As the end of 1997, there were about 3,222 prisoners on death row in 34 states. 47 (1.5%) are women. Recent laws have expanded the number of crimes for which capital punishment can be applied. Other laws have reduced some of...
... middle of paper ...
...ich would outweigh the human rights, and furthermore the death penalty contradicts the internationally accepted goal of rehabilitating the offender.
I believe that it is more important for the convicted of the capital punishment to pay for it throughout the rest of his or her life. By eliminating a person through the death penalty, people will forget about the person and the act the person committed, which would not serve the purpose of punishment as a deterrent. By letting the convicted of capital crime to live to be reformed and to work on reparation for his or her crime is far more meaningful and effective as a deterrent to similar crimes by others. Stop playing God. Stop violating fundamental human rights. Lets give closure to one of the degrading chapters of our society and prove to the world how civil we really are.
Work Cited
Amnesty international http://www.amnesty.org/
“Rights for all” http://www.rightsforall-usa.org/
“The Annual Report” http://www.amnestyusa.org/ailib/aireport/ar99/amr51.htm
Death Penalty Links “Human Rights Death Penalty” http://www.derechos.org/dp/
Sandoholzer, Kuno Death Penalty USA Pages http://www.agitator.com/dp/
...ne, no matter how heinous the crime. Capital punishment causes pain for the inmate, the inmate's family, the victim's family, and society as a whole. Death sentences should cease; instead of spending money on executions, states should use those funds to better the community and rehabilitate those individuals convicted. Every human life possesses value.
There are wide and divergent opinions on the United States’ Supreme Court decisions on capital punishment. While proponents of capital punishment allege that it can be applied as with the existence of sufficient due process, others contend that human life is irreplaceable and that “every person has the right to have their life respected” (Oppenheim, “Capital Punishment in the United States”). While capital punishment has phased in and out of the United States’ criminal justice system in the past few decades, current trends seem to fall out of favor with the death penalty. As Snell indicates, by yearend of 2011, there were 3,082 inmates held across 35 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons under the death sentence, where 9 states executed 43 inmates in both 2011 and 2012 (“Capital Punishment, 2011 – Statistical Tables”). In order to gain a deeper understanding and enhanced projection of the death penalty development, it is prudent to first examining historical accounts of cases that have been decided in favor or against the capital punishment in the United States.
The world revolves around money, so our government should not waste it putting an inmate to death when we can keep him/her alive for a quarter of the cost. The reason it costs so much to give an inmate capital punishment is because they must submit to a extensive and strenuous judicial process. By doing so, the courts are making sure that they are not executing an innocent man for a crime that he did not commit, but even with these protections, the risk of murdering an innocent man cannot be completely eliminated. Life without parole not only saves millions of dollars, it safeguards the community from an irreversible mistake in taking the wrong life. The money that is saved can then be put towards programs that can improve the community (High Cost).
Considering all the above facts and arguments capital punishment is needed to ensure the safety and moral values of society. Certainly human lives are more important and thus we should not abolish capital punishment, but hold our country liable for properly implementing the death penalty upon those who deserve it. As Edward Koch once said:
In the constitution, the preamble states that “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America” (Preamble.). The reason why I chose this evidence is because the beginning always says “we the people” not “we the government”, and the founding fathers made the constitution for the United States and its people. The Bible warned that “[one] shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment” (44 Bible Verses about Murder.). Christianity is just one of the religions in the United States of America and each one of those religions have different values that conflict with the death penalty, which can be a factor on why some states stop practicing it. Bruce Fein announced that “abolitionists may contend that the death penalty is inherently immoral because governments should never take human life, no matter what the provocation” (Top 10 Pros and Cons Should the Death Penalty Be Allowed?). The government should never decide whether we die or not because, first of all, a jury should decide whether to
The death penalty has been part of our civilization since earliest times, from the ancient cultures to the Romans were harsh and swift in their judgments and execution. Jesus himself was a victim of the death penalty. Up though time murder has always been punishable by death as well as many other crimes. Justice was often harsh and brutal. In England there was hanging, drawing and quartering or beheading, France the guillotine was used as being quicker. When we came to this country we brought the same ideals with us. The witches of Salem were burned or drowned when they were thought to cause deaths. We used firing squads, hanging was popular in the east as well as out west, the electric chair and gas chamber, now the lethal injection. And until the present time justice was swift! When our forefathers signed the constitution the death penalty was being used but no mention of it was made in the 8th Amendment as the death penalty being "cruel or unusual punishment", because they did not feel being put to death because you deliberately took anothers life was unusual or cruel but EXPECTED!
The death penalty has been around since the time of Jesus Christ. Executions have been recorded from the 1600s to present times. From about 1620, the executions by year increased in the US. It has been a steady increase up until the 1930s; later the death penalty dropped to zero in the 1970s and then again rose steadily. US citizens said that the death penalty was unconstitutional because it was believed that it was "cruel and unusual" punishment (Amnesty International). In the 1970s, the executions by year dropped between zero and one then started to rise again in the 1980s. In the year 2000, there were nearly one hundred executions in the US (News Batch). On June 29, 1972, the death penalty was suspended because the existing laws were no longer convincing. However, four years after this occurred, several cases came about in Georgia, Florida, and Texas where lawyers wanted the death penalty. This set new laws in these states and later the Supreme Court decided that the death penalty was constitutional under the Eighth Amendment (Amnesty International).
The death penalty is going against human rights. A right to live their life without having the state take their life away. “The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It is premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state in the name of justice.
Almost all nations in the world either have the death sentence or have had it at one time. It was used in most cases to punish those who broke the laws or standards that were expected of them. Since the death penalty wastes tax money, is inhumane, and is largely unnecessary it should be abolished in every state across the United States. The use of the death penalty puts the United States in the same category as countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia which are two of the world’s worst human rights violators (Friedman 34). Lauri Friedman quotes, “Executions simply inject more violence into an already hostile American society.”
...l community overwhelmingly has accepted the position that the application of the penalty of death amounts to cruel and inhumane treatment or punishment. Why? Because it Not only does the State, with all its moral virtues, have time on its hands to change its mind, but also civilised society is able to prepare, premeditate and actually take part in the taking of human’s life. In so doing, stripping the recipient of all dignity and self-respect he or she so deserves by just being human coupled with the ultimate effect of “[C]heapen[ing] the value of human life.” By having State sanctioned executions therefore, the State disregards the very fundamental concepts of the right to life and dignity of the individual, and as a consequent the very respect for the human rights of the individual (a concept being introduced around the world by most modern democracies).
The death penalty is an unnecessary punishment. There are no benefits to killing a criminal who committed an awful crime. The state/country loses money, the criminals get an easy way out of their situation, people can be wrongly executed (which is irreversible), and it goes against God’s will of a natural death. These are all negative things that the death penalty brings about. For these reasons, the death penalty should be abolished for all states and all countries around the world.
The death penalty or some prefer to call it capital punishment has been around since 1608. During the foundation of our country there were twelve death – eligible crimes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and they were as follows: idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, murder, manslaughter, poisoning, bestiality, sodomy, adultery, man stealing , false witness in capital cases and conspiracy & rebellion. While some are absolutely for it and some are absolutely against it there is one factor that comes into play on both sides of the argument and that factor is religion. Many people will state that there is or should be a line between church and state however religion has and will always play a major role in ones conceptual thinking as to what is right and as to what is wrong what is moral and what is immoral. Despite the fact that people would rather think or rationalize without involving religion is nearly impossible. “By virtually any definition, religion involves a central concern with making sense of life and death. The American legal system, rooted in Judeo-Christian ethics, routinely confronts issues that test our basic assumptions about the meaning and sanctity of life and about the role of the State in shaping and sustaining such meanings” (Young,1992).
Every country in Europe has banned the death penalty except Belarus, so why haven’t we banned it? As of 2017 in Europe, every country has abolished the death penalty for peacetime crimes except for Belarus, and America is yet to outlaw the death penalty. The first ever recorded execution in British North America was in 1608 on Captain George Kendall for allegedly spying for the Spanish government. It’s been 409 years since the first recorded execution in U.S land, so why are we still continuing execution. The death penalty should be banned in the U.S because many cases have had racial profiling, it is unconstitutional, violating the 8th amendment, it sends the wrong message of killing someone to teach not to kill, and life in prison is a worse punishment than the death penalty.
Capital punishment goes against almost every religion. Isolated passages of religious scripture have been quoted in support of the death penalty, almost all religious groups in the United States regard executions as immoral. There is no credible evidence that capital punishment deters crime from the streets in America. Scientific studies have consistently failed to demonstrate that executions deter people from committing crime anymore than long prison sentences. Moreover, states without the death penalty have much lower murder rates. Executions are carried out at staggering cost to taxpayer.The funds spent for execution should be used to target the issue of killing and find solutions to help communities unite to demonstrate a more peaceful environment. Recent CNN reported how studies done have found that the death penalty criminal litigation, costs taxpayers far more than seeking life without parole. (CNN, 2015) The states spends millions of dollars to put away death row inmates when the funds could be used to help channel society in tune with how to become more positive and getting help to those who need
More than 607 people were executed worldwide due to capital punishment, only 22% less than in 2013. While death from capital punishment has gone down, people still believe we have the right to take a living person’s life away. If that person committed a crime that was equivalent to the punishment of death, should society continue in its ways of ‘an eye for an eye’; or move onto a more civilized solution? The death penalty is shown to be a more barbaric thing for some people in the U.S., and Europe, but in other countries, like in the Middle East, it is considered a way to assert dominance over other countries of political leaders that you would go as far as to kill someone for a petty crime.