Death Penalty Essay Research Paper

Death Penalty Essay, Research Paper

“Dead man walking!” This sound rings through each and every death row inmate a thousand times a day; but should it. Capital punishment is one of the most controversial topics among Americans today. The most severe of all sentences: that of death. Also known as the death penalty, capital punishment this is the most severe form of corporal punishment as it is requires law enforcement officers to kill the offender. It has been banned in many countries, in the United States, an earlier move to eliminate capital punishment has now been reversed and more and more states are resorting to capital punishment for serious offenses such as murder. An eye for and eye, a life for a life, who has never heard of the famous lex talionis. The Bible mentions it, and people have been using it regularly for centuries. We use it in reference to burglary, adultery, love and many other situations. However, some people use it on a different level, some people use it in reference to death. One steals from those who have stolen from him, one wrongs those who have wronged him, but do we really have the right to kill those who have killed. Today, there is a big controversy over capital punishment whether or not it works, or if it is morally right. We have a certain privilege on our own lives, but do the lives of others belong to us as well. Do we have the right to decide the kind of lives others can or cannot live. We find someone guilty of murder and sentence him to death, does that not make murderers out of ourselves. Those who assist in the death penalty are they not partners in crime. Society should not allow the death penalty in order to set up a more efficient justice system to prevent the execution of innocent people, to eliminate the unethical deterrent, and to abolish the society taking a life.

First, the society should not allow the death penalty in order to set up a more efficient justice system to prevent the execution of innocent people. In the past, there were many people wrongfully executed for crimes that they did not commit all in the name of justice. It has happened that after the execution of the alleged guilty party, the real murderer confessed to elevate his guilty conscience. Hugo Bedau states that “no matter how careful courts are, the possibility of perjured testimony, mistaken honest testimony, and human error remain all too real. We have no way of judging how many innocent persons have been executed, but we can be certain there were some…” (Bedau 76). The unique thing about the death penalty is that it is final and irreversible. Since 1970, seventy-seven people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. Researchers Radelet & Bedau found twenty-three cases since 1900 where innocent people were executed, and the numbers are growing. With stories of people like Rolando Cruz, released after 10 years on Illinois’s death row, despite the fact that another man had confessed to the crime shortly after his conviction. Also, Ricardo Aldape Guerra, who returned to Mexico after 15 years on Texas’s death row because of a prosecution that a federal judge called outrageous and designed to simply achieve another notch on the prosecutor’s guns (Costanzo 115). Now, there are safeguards guaranteeing protection of those facing the death penalty. These safeguards are that the defendant can not be insane, and the man’s real or criminal intent must be present. Also, minors very rarely receive the death penalty because they are not fully mature and might not know the consequences of their actions. Finally, the mentally retarded are very seldom executed. The reasons for not executing the retarded is that they often have difficulty defending themselves in court, have problems remembering details, locating witnesses, and testifying credibly on their own behalf. These safeguards are to try to insure that justice will be served without having it suffer (Costanzo 58).

Secondly, the society should not allow the death penalty in order to set up a more efficient justice system to eliminate the unethical deterrent act. A major purpose of criminal punishment is to deter future criminal conduct. The deterrence theory suggests that a rational person will avoid criminal behavior if the severity of the punishment outweigh the benefits of the illegal conduct. It is believed that fear of death deters people from committing crimes. Most criminals would think twice before committing murder if they knew their own lives were at stake. That if attached to certain crimes, the penalty of death exerts a positive moral influence on certain crimes like manslaughter, resulting in attitudes of disgust and horror to such acts… (Winters 136). Studies of the deterrent effect of the death penalty have been conducted for several years, with varying results. Most of these studies have failed to produce evidence that the death penalty deterred murders more effectively then the threat of imprisonment. The reason for this is that few people are executed and so the death penalty is not a satisfactory deterrent. If capital punishment were carried out more it would prove to be the crime deterrent it was partly intended to be. During highly publicized death penalty cases the homicide rate is found to go down but it goes back up when the case is over (Costanzo 92). When comparisons are made between states with the death penalty and states without, the majority of death