Capital Punishment Or The Death Penalty In The 1930's

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Vanessa Kroska English 10B-3 Ms. Ring January 5, 2017 Capital Punishment Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is the legal killing of someone as punishment for a crime. The death penalty was most commonly used in the 1930’s, but in recent years, people are not as supportive of the death penalty. The death penalty is too expensive and time consuming to effectively prevent people from committing murder. Many people feel that capital punishment raises a plethora of human rights issues, and because of that, there are many restrictions on its use and some areas have even abolished it. The name ‘capital punishment’ originates from the Latin word capitalis, meaning ‘of the head’ (referring to executions by beheading). The very first established …show more content…

Some who support capital punishment say it is an important tool for keeping and protecting law and order, it deters crime, costs less than a life sentence in prison, and is retribution for the victim and the victim’s family. Capital Punishment is actually highly expensive. Cases where capital punishment is sought cost $1.26 million on average. It costs $90,000 more per year to maintain a death row prisoner than a prisoner in general population. Therefore, the argument that capital punishment is less expensive than a life sentence is invalid. Those who do not support capital punishment say the death penalty is not a deterrent on crime, it wrongly gives the government power to take human lives, it perpetuates social injustices by targeting people of color and people living in poverty, and they also argue that lifetime jail sentences are a more severe and less expensive punishment than …show more content…

Civil Liberties expert Tom Head wrote, “Merriam-Webster defines murder as "the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another." The death penalty is indeed premeditated, and it is indeed the killing of a human person.” In other words, capital punishment is murder. Those who are pro-death penalty do not agree with this statement, though, and argue that capital punishment is legally justified, therefore not murder. Some claim the death penalty is a deterrent on crime, but 88% of the top criminologists in the United States don’t agree that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide. In 2010, the Smart on Crime survey of 500 law enforcement executives concluded that most police chiefs and sheriffs do not find the death penalty to be a deterrent. Dr. Jonathan Groner, an associate professor of surgery at Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health, said, "It is very clear that deterrents are not effective in the area of capital punishment. The psychological mind-set of the criminal is such that they are not able to consider consequences at the time of the crime. Most crimes are crimes of passion that are done in situations involving intense excitement or concern. People who commit these crimes are not in a normal state of mind - they do not consider the consequences in a logical way." Deterrents work in situations where the consequences

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