Death Penalty Essay Research Paper There are

Death Penalty Essay, Research Paper

There are four main reasons for punishment: rehabilitation (to return someone to

a former status), reformation (to re-form or re-create an individual),

deterrence (to deter others or to deter the person punished), and retribution

(an eye for an eye). The death penalty is a punishment to a person in which the

person is put to death for a very serious crime they have committed, usually

when they take another person’s life. Our state and federal legislators have

created laws that specifically identify which crimes a person commits that can

be punishable by the death penalty. The death penalty is seen as a deterrent to

increasing and more serious crime. If members of the society know that if they

commit serious crimes they could be put to death for it, they are less likely to

commit these crimes. However, there is great disagreement in our society about

whether it is a true deterrent to crime or not. When I think of the thousands of

inhabitants of Death Rows in the prisons in this country…my reaction is:

"What’s taking us so long. Let’s get that electrical current flowing. Drop

those pebbles now!" Whenever I argue this with friends who have opposite

views, they say that I don’t have enough regard for the most marvelous of

miracles – human life. Just the opposite: It’s because I have so much regard for

human life that I favor capital punishment. Murder is the most terrible crime

there is. Anything less than the death penalty is an insult to the victim and

society. It says…that we don’t value the victim’s life enough to punish the

killer fully. Many abolition supporters quote, "the death penalty is not a

deterrent." Many abolitionist also add there is NO deterrent for a murderer

(there will always be a few individuals that are up for a challenge no matter

what the consequences are for their crimes in my opinion). Since jail is neither

a deterrent in essence, according to those that wish to abolish the death

penalty, how long before "jail time" for murderers would be their next

punishment to target for removal from our books. One argument states that the

death penalty does not deter murder. Dismissing capital punishment on that basis

requires us to eliminate all prisons as well because they do not seem to be any

more effective in the deterrence of crime. Others say that states which do have

the death penalty have higher crime rates than those that don’t, that a more

severe punishment only inspires more severe crimes. I must point out that every

state in the union is different. These differences include the populations,

number of cities, and yes, the crime rates. Strongly urbanized states are more

likely to have higher crime rates than states that are more rural, such as those

that lack capital punishment. The states that have capital punishment have it

because of their high crime rate, not the other way around. Abolitionists claim

that there are alternatives to the death penalty. They say that life in prison

without parole serves just as well. Certainly, if you ignore all the murders

criminals commit within prison when they kill prison guards and other inmates,

and also when they kill decent citizens upon escape, like Dawud Mu’Min who was

serving a 48-year sentence for the 1973 murder of a cab driver when he escaped a

road work gang and stabbed to death a storekeeper named Gadys Nopwasky in a 1988

robbery that netted $4.00. Fortunately, there is now no chance of Mu’Min

committing murder again. He was executed by the state of Virginia on November

14, 1997. Another flaw is that life imprisonment tends to deteriorate with the

passing of time. Take the Moore case in New York State for example. In 1962,

James Moore raped and strangled 14-year-old Pamela Moss. Her parents decided to

spare Moore the death penalty on the condition that he be sentenced to life in

prison without parole. Later on, thanks to a change in sentencing laws in 1982,

James Moore is eligible for parole every two years! If Pamela’s parents knew

that they couldn’t trust the state, Moore could have been executed long ago and

they could have put the whole horrible incident behind them forever. Instead

they have a nightmare to deal with biannually. I’ll bet not a day goes by that

they don’t kick themselves for being foolish enough to trust the liberal sham

that is life imprisonment and rehabilitation. (According to the US Department of

Justice, the average prison sentence served for murder is five years and eleven

months.) Putting a murderer away for life just isn’t good enough. Laws change,

so do parole boards, and people forget the past. Those are things that cause

life imprisonment to weather away. As long as the murderer lives, there is

always a chance, no matter how small, that he will strike again. And there are

people who run the criminal justice system who are

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