Lately, it seems as if the death penalty has been in the news a lot. One is always hearing about an innocent man going free because of DNA testing, or protests outside of jailhouses as criminals are being put to death. Just recently, the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia has fueled the debate even further, making many wonder what the debate is about. If a person commits murder, the logic goes, then that person should be killed too. An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth. But what many do not realize is that the death penalty is not without its faults. What makes the death penalty a conscientious issue is the underlying problems that are going on behind the scenes. The death penalty affects everyone and is not applied equally to all, and thus should be abolished to maintain the dignity of the United States and its judicial system.
Capital punishment is not new to American culture. For many years, "the death penalty was a cornerstone of the American criminal justice system" (Friedman, 2007, p. 8), and it wasn't until the 1960s that capital punishment started to be seen as anti-American, even immoral. Many people argued "that the capital punishment violated the Eight Amendmant's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment" (Friedman, 2007, p. 9), and that the death penalty was wrong because they felt the government should not be killing its citizens, even if that citizen committed a crime as atrocious as murder. But the Supreme Court disagreed, especially when certain criminal codes were rewritten so that the death penalty applied to only certain cases. For example, in Texas, capital punishment is reserved only for certain crimes, which includes killing an on-duty public safety officer, a child under ten years old, and ...
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...shed is that it is not applied equally to all defendants. "One stable pattern is that the offenders are more likely to be sentenced to death when victims are white rather than black" (Petrie 630). This hardly seems fair, as it implies that white victims are more valuable than victims, something that should not be true in the eyes of the criminal justice system. If murder is murder, then the justice handed out should be equal to all who commit such a crime.
Works Cited
Boys, Stephanie. (2011). The death penalty: An unusual punishment America is inflicting upon itself. Critical Criminology, 19(2), 107-118.
Friedman, Lauri S. (2007). The death penalty. San Diego, CA: Reference Point Press.
Petrie, Michelle A., & Coverdill, James E. (2010). Who lives and dies on death row? Race, ethnicity, and post-sentence outcomes in Texas. Social Problems, 57(4), 630-652.
Koch, Larry Wayne, John F Galliher, and Colin Wark, The Death of the American Death Penalty : States Still Leading the Way. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2012, Ebscohost Ebook.
Racial representation in death row proves that justice system consistently shows bias, primarily through crime victim treatment. Though originally the Supreme Court
Most death row inmates are members of minority groups that tend to be poor. The fact they are on death row can be explained as a direct result of their marginal economic status. These alleged criminals receive legal representation that is not adequate for the serious crimes of which they are accused, simply because they cannot afford to pay for expensive defense attorneys (The Death Penalty). In virtually all cases of indigent defendants, underpaid and less experienced Public Defense attorneys are appointed by the court to represent the accused. Investigative monies are usually limited or nonexistent. This is one reason why minorities are over-represented on death row. More affluent white defen...
Geraghty, Thomas F. "Trying to Understand America’s Death Penalty System and Why We Still Have it." Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 94.1 (2003): 209-237. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 5 Nov. 2009.
...ed United States. U.S. Government Accounting Office. Capital Punishment. Washington: GPO, 1994 Cheatwood, Derral and Keith Harries. The Geography of Execution: The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America. Rowman, 1996 NAACP Legal Defense Fund . Death Row. New York: Hein, 1996 "Ex-Death Row Inmate Cleared of Charges." USA Today 11 Mar. 1999: 2A "Fatal Flaws: Innocence and the Death Penalty." Amnesty International. 10 Oct. 1999 23 Oct. 1999 Gest, Ted. "House Without a Blue Print." US News and World Report 8 Jul. 1996: 41 Stevens, Michelle. "Unfairness in Life and Death." Chicago Sun-Times 7 Feb. 1999: 23A American Bar Association. The Task Ahead: Reconciling Justice with Politics. 1997 United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Report. Washington: GPO, 1994 Wickham, DeWayne. "Call for a Death Penalty Moratorium." USA Today 8 Feb. 1999: 17A ILKMURPHY
Mandery, E. J., & Mandery, E. J. (2011). Capital punishment in America: A balanced examination. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
25 Hugo Adams Bedau, The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) 250.
“The case Against the Death Penalty.” aclu.org. American Civil Liberties Union, 2012. Web. 12 Feb. 2013
Racism Review: Scholarship and activism toward racial justice. (2010). Race and the Death Penatly 2: Black defendants, White Victims . Retrieved from Racism Review: Scholarship and activism toward racial justice : http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2010/04/17/race-and-the-death-penalty-ii-black-defendants-white-victims/
The death penalty continues to be an issue of controversy and is an issue that will be debated in the United States for many years to come. According to Hugo A. Bedau, the writer of “The Death Penalty in America”, capital punishment is the lawful infliction of the death penalty. The death penalty has been used since ancient times for a variety of offenses. The Bible says that death should be done to anyone who commits murder, larceny, rapes, and burglary. It appears that public debate on the death penalty has changed over the years and is still changing, but there are still some out there who are for the death penalty and will continue to believe that it’s a good punishment. I always hear a lot of people say “an eye for an eye.” Most people feel strongly that if a criminal took the life of another, their’s should be taken away as well, and I don’t see how the death penalty could deter anyone from committing crimes if your going to do the crime then at that moment your not thinking about being on death role. I don’t think they should be put to death they should just sit in a cell for the rest of their life and think about how they destroy other families. A change in views and attitudes about the death penalty are likely attributed to results from social science research. The changes suggest a gradual movement toward the eventual abolition of capital punishment in America (Radelet and Borg, 2000).
Race plays a large factor in showing how you are viewed in society. Although there is no longer slavery and separate water fountains, we can still see areas of our daily life clearly affected by race. One of these areas is the criminal justice system and that is because the color of your skin can easily yet unfairly determine if you receive the death penalty. The controversial evidence showing that race is a large contributing factor in death penalty cases shows that there needs to be a change in the system and action taken against these biases. The issue is wide spread throughout the United States and can be proven with statistics. There is a higher probability that a black on white crime will result in a death penalty verdict than black on black or white on black. Race will ultimately define the final ruling of the sentence which is evident in the racial disparities of the death penalty. The amount of blacks on death row can easily be seen considering the majority of the prison population is black or blacks that committed the same crime as a white person but got a harsher sentence. The biases and prejudices that are in our society relating to race come to light when a jury is selected to determine a death sentence. So what is the relationship between race and the death penalty? This paper is set out to prove findings of different race related sentences and why blacks are sentenced to death more for a black on white crime. Looking at the racial divide we once had in early American history and statistics from sources and data regarding the number of blacks on death row/executed, we can expose the issues with this racial dilemma.
Pasquerella, Lynn. “The Death Penalty in the United States.” The Study Circle Resource Center of Topsfield Foundation. July 1991. Topsfield Foundation. 03 Feb 2011. Web.
Americans have argued over the death penalty since the early days of our country. In the United States only 38 states have capital punishment statutes. As of year ended in 1999, in Texas, the state had executed 496 prisoners since 1930. The laws in the United States have change drastically in regards to capital punishment. An example of this would be the years from 1968 to 1977 due to the nearly 10 year moratorium. During those years, the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment violated the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. However, this ended in 1976, when the Supreme Court reversed the ruling. They stated that the punishment of sentencing one to death does not perpetually infringe the Constitution. Richard Nixon said, “Contrary to the views of some social theorists, I am convinced that the death penalty can be an effective deterrent against specific crimes.”1 Whether the case be morally, monetarily, or just pure disagreement, citizens have argued the benefits of capital punishment. While we may all want murders off the street, the problem we come to face is that is capital punishment being used for vengeance or as a deterrent.
The average time an inmate stays on death row between sentencing and execution rose between 1986 and 2006 from seven years to twelve years1. In 2013, the trend has only continued, making the period between trial and execution even longer. When the constitution was writ...
---- World Book Online Americas Edition. Ed. Franklin E. Zimring. Capital Punishment. 17 Apr 2002 14 Apr 2002.