In an interview with Death Penalty Information Center, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1956 to 1990, Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. said, “Perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent.” Imagining about death can brings terror to anyone. Knowing someone will die hurts more than someone dying instantly. Death Penalty does not allow murderer to to feel guilt for their committed brutal crime. In every case, there is always a small percentage of chance that victim might be innocent. The death penalty should not be legal in any case because of its inhumanity, easy way out for murderer, …show more content…
and unfair justice system. The youngest american to get executed is fourteen years old George Junius Stinney. Stinney’s 90 pounds of body was hit with the 2,400 Volts surge of electricity in his execution. Due to his small size compared to other prisoners, his body could not properly fit with the chair. His face was exposed from the mask during the execution and “revealing his wide-open, tearful eyes and saliva coming from his mouth." His death penalty did not only exposed the cruelty and inhumanity, but it also exposed the racism towards African American race (Coates). Various techniques and tools are used by different states for the death penalty. There is not a perfect way to perform death penalty because all techniques have some negative effect. Some of these techniques are not very effective and cause a lot of pain before killing the prisoner. In the nonfiction novel In Cold Blood, Truman Capote describes the talk between two executor of Dick Hickcock. The first executor said, “They don't feel nothing. Drop, snap, and that's it. They don't feel nothing.” and another executor responded him by saying, “Are you sure? I was standing right close. I could hear him gasping for breath”(pg 340). This emphasizes that Dick Hickcock suffered from tremendous pain before he lost his last breath. It took twenty minutes before doctor announced him dead. Officials can never understand the suffering of the prisoner between the time of hanging and death. Hickok was “gasping for breath” for twenty minutes and it is definitely not a humanly act to left someone in extreme pain for twenty minutes. Because there is not a single effective way for death penalty, all current ways are representation of inhuman act. The easiest punishment for killing other human life is death penalty.
Death penalty saves murderer from living a life of guilt. In In Cold Blood, Hickock right before his execution said, "I just want to say I hold no hard feelings. You people are sending me to a better world than this ever was" (pg 339). This highlights that Hickock accepted the death penalty because it allows him to get away from the real punishment of guilt. In the execution of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock the trail was not fair. In the past, there had been many trails where innocent was executed due to lack of money to hire a qualified lawyer, or justice system discriminated against …show more content…
innocent. Over the last few decades, we can see prejudice in the United States justice system. Our justice system have been discriminating in death penalty trials based on the gender, race and economic class of the accused murderer. According to the American Magazine, “Of the 1,058 prisoners on death row by Aug. 20,1982, 42 percent were black, whereas about 12 percent of the United States population is black” (Meehan). This emphasizes the discrimination against the blacks on the death row. The discrimination based on the race is extreme in our justice system that “those who kill whites are nearly 40 times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill blacks"(Meehan). The discrimination can also be seen based on the Socioeconomic class. Article published in the American Magazine states, “Those who receive the death penalty still tend to be poor, poorly educated and represented by public defenders or court-appointed lawyers (Meehan). The discrimination based on the class is became the nature of our society. Justice system should work towards the equality rather than practicing and encouraging more discrimination. This suggests how our justice system is failing to provide a fair trial. While most are against the brutality of death penalty, some are in favor of it. Someone would claim that death penalty costs less money than keeping prisona alive for the remainder of his life.
They might claim that it is better to hang someone than use state’s fund to feed and keep them alive. However, the reality is completely opposite. In the American television program, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, John Oliver stated that cost per execution in California is $308 million. Furthermore, he said, “it cost upto ten times more to give someone death penalty than life in prison.” This tells us that by giving a prisoner a death penalty, state is spending more money than they would otherwise. Because the expense for executing someone is extreme, it would be better to keep someone alive in the prison for remaining
life. Death penalty often kills innocent human beings. As Benjamin Franklin said, “That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer [death].” All human lives have its value and we can not take away someone’s life. Our justice system can go wrong and innocent person might get hanged for the crimes which were never committed by him. The techniques used to execute prisoner might get wrong and cause prisoner to extremely suffer. There should not be other fourteen year old dying with pain. Death penalty is against God’s will, economically expensive, and cost inconent person’s valuable life. Therefore, death penalty should not be legal in any case.
The death penalty is killing people for their murderous action. A book called In Cold Blood talked about people dying or being robbed. Two people named Perry and Dick did that, and now they sent themselves to jail and will get the death penalty for what they did. What they suggest for the death penalty now is rich never hang. Only poor and friendless, finding guilty people to death penalty, and defendants that stand up to the jury will get the death penalty.
The death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment which is strictly prohibited by the 8th amendment. William J. Brennan, Jr., JD, the Former US Supreme Court Justice, stated "Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality, and in its enormity, but it serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment; therefore the principle inherent in the Clause that prohibits pointless infliction of excessive punishment when less severe punishment can adequately achieve the same purposes invalidates the punishment." Gregg v Georgia [1976]. After committing a crime all criminals will face some form of punishment after the action. As the honorable William J. Brennan stated above, if you can still bring justice to the crimes committed why would one go the extra mile to take somebody’s life. This makes the death penalty look spiteful and cruel. Even though criminals should be fully held for their actions and are not worthy of supporting in a jail cell, these arguments do serve a purpose. It is against America’s ethics as a country that follows the Constitution to continue these executions and makes the US look hypocritical and inhumane when trying to be the role model for the
In the novel, the innocent Clutter family is murdered in their own home one night, but the details of the case are not disclosed at first. The reader, however, is aware that Dick Hickock and Perry Smith embark on a nationwide road trip after committing the brutal crime. The childhoods of both characters are brought up in great detail, but the reader is especially meant to sympathize with Perry who grew up with much adversary in his life like a physical handicap, divorced parents from different states, and suicidal siblings. Because Perry did not receive much good behavioral leadership, tried to convince Dick not to follow through with the homicides, and likely had a mental illness that inhibited rational thinking, the audience was outraged when Perry Smith was sent to death row and eventually killed. In Cold Blood argues that committing a capital crime did not erase the good person that Perry was, but that he simply trusted the wrong people and made poor decisions that should not be punished by
Notwithstanding issues of morality, the death penalty process of California is financially inefficient and ineffective. At the current rate of executions, “it would take 1,600 years to execute everybody on death row.” [The Death of the American Death Penalty, 122] The average delay in implementing a death sentence calculates out to be 25 years, at an added cost of $90,000 per year over normal incarceration. [Guy, 2] This is a “premium that currently totals more than $60 million a year” [Guy, 2]. When you take the added costs of death row incarceration and total them up with the additional costs of prosecution and the handling of the many legal appeals death row inmates are entitled to, the unnecessary amount of spending is significant. We could eliminate “$126 million a year” in additional costs by simply sentencing death row inmates to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. [Guy, 2] Because of the afo...
Is it justifiable to inflict the death penalty on individuals who have committed murder? As majority would have it, yes. There are many arguments in favor of capital punishment. Some of these include taking a murderer out of this world once and for all, and saving money that would be spent on them if they were given a life sentence, as well as the majority rule of citizens of the United States wishing it to stay. In Truman Capote’s nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood, Dick and Perry were assigned the death penalty for the cruel murders of four members of the Clutter family in a small town in Kansas. Not only did this pair of men deserve what they got, but it is also better for the state that they were executed.
The sentencing of underage criminals has remained a logistical and moral issue in the world for a very long time. The issue is brought to our perspective in the documentary Making a Murderer and the audio podcast Serial. When trying to overcome this issue, we ask ourselves, “When should juveniles receive life sentences?” or “Should young inmates be housed with adults?” or “Was the Supreme Court right to make it illegal to sentence a minor to death?”. There are multiple answers to these questions, and it’s necessary to either take a moral or logical approach to the problem.
A report from the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice stated that, “The additional cost of confining an inmate to death row, as compared to the maximum security prisons where those sentenced to life without 69 possibility of parole ordinarily serve their sentences, is $90,000 per year per inmate.94 With California’s current death row population of 670, that accounts for $63.3 million annually. Reducing the
Main Point 1: Imagine someone that has been accused of murder and sentenced to death row has to spend almost 17-20 years in jail and then one day get kill. Then later on the person that they killed was not the right person.
Have you ever wondered why people are so interested to learn about the suffrage of others? Over twenty-five years, the population of prisoners has nearly sextulped. Reaching about 1.7 million since 1996, which is almost equal to the population to Houston, Texas, the fourth largest city in the nation (Elliott Currie). All we focus on is how they did it? and why? In other words, many people interpret crime as entertainment, and don’t think about the negative effects taking place in the world or even more that individual. In some cases the innocent are being accused of unlikely punishment but how do they determine? Considerably, the death penalty has been the topic of discussion these past years. This so called “penalty” is becoming the prime consequence in most cases. I think that the use of the death penalty as punishment is wrong because of the psychological effects it has on prisoners, time spent on death row in cases of innocents, and the costly outcome.
Between 1977 and 2010, an estimated 8,000 people were on Death Row in the US and out of those 8,000, more than 1,200 were actually executed (Siennick, 2012). Policy makers and scholars have been especially interested in whether the death penalty serves a crime-control function by deterring prospective murderers (Siennick, 2012). This debate on whether or not the Death Penalty is an effective deterrent is important to our society because we need to understand the impact of this ultimate and final punishment. Expectations of deterrence follow from the basic idea that potential murderers decide whether to kill after considering the benefits and costs of killing (Siennick, 2012). The Death Penalty as punishment can be a deciding factor to a potential murderer when they make the decision whether to kill someone or not. There is assorted evidence on whether or not this happens and there isn’t a chosen method to gather data that fully supports this idea.
One of the most repetitive and controversial topics discussed in the criminal justice system, is the death penalty. Capital punishment has been a part of our nation’s history since the creation of our constitution. In fact, as of January 1st, 2016, 2,943 inmates were awaiting their fate on death row (Death Penalty Information Center). Throughout my life, I have always been a strong advocate for the death penalty. During the majority of my undergraduate degree, I was a fierce supporter of capital punishment when discussing the topic in classes. However, throughout many criminal justice courses, I found myself in the minority, regarding the abolishment of the death penalty. While debating this topic, I would always find myself sympathetic to the victims and their families, as one should be, wanting those who were responsible for heinous crimes to
When someone is legally convicted of a capital crime, it is possible for their punishment to be execution. The Death Penalty has been a controversial topic for many years. Some believe the act of punishing a criminal by execution is completely inhumane, while others believe it is a necessary practice needed to keep our society safe. In this annotated bibliography, there are six articles that each argue on whether or not the death penalty should be illegalized. Some authors argue that the death penalty should be illegal because it does not act as a deterrent, and it negatively effects the victim’s families. Other scholar’s state that the death penalty should stay legalized because there is an overcrowding in prisons and it saves innocent’s lives. Whether or not the death penalty should be
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.
When you think of an extreme crime, you think of murder. When you think of an extreme punishment, you think of the death penalty. Crimes of such severity sometimes deserve equal punishment and we as a society accept this. However, Supreme Court Justice William Brennan argues that society seriously questions the appropriateness of the death penalty. It is true that over the years since the death penalty was first implemented, it has undergone some changes, but this does not suggest that we believe that the death penalty is unacceptable.
Michael Sanders, a Professor at Harvard University, gave a lecture titled “Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? The Moral Side of Murder” to nearly a thousand student’s in attendance. The lecture touched on two contrasting philosophies of morality. The first philosophy of morality discussed in the lecture is called Consequentialism. This is the view that "the consequences of one 's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct.” (Consequentialism) This type of moral thinking became known as utilitarianism and was formulated by Jeremy Bentham who basically argues that the most moral thing to do is to bring the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people possible.